./• 


.  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


KkOM   THI-:    I.IBkAkV    Ol 

BENJAMIN  PARKE  AVERY. 


GIFT  OF  MRS.  AVERY, 

f  Aiitrusl,  t8o6. 


f  -^iitrusi,  t»Of).  ^      _     ^^ 

Accessiomhlo.L)37'^^     Oms  No.      eoO 


4?  I  . 

/DO 
,0\ 

130 

sol 


STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH; 


OR, 


GLIMPSES  OF  THE  INNER  LIFE  OE  OUR  LANGUAGE. 


M.   SCHELE   DE   VERE,  LL.D. 

PROFESSOB  OF  MODERN   LANGUAGES   IN  THE   UNIVERSITY  OF  VIRGINIA. 


Uiri7ERSlTr] 


NEW   YORK: 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER  AND  COMPANY. 

1867. 


^37f7 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1866,  by 

ChAKLES  SCEIBNEB  AND  COMPANY, 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Southern 
District  of  New  York. 


RivMisn)!,  oambeidob: 

STIRIOTTPBl)    AND    PRINTBD    BT 
H.  0.  HOUGHTON  AND  COMPANT. 


PREFACE. 


The  illustrious  founder  of  the  University  of  Virginia, 
Thomas  Jefferson,  appreciating  with  rare  foresight,  nearly 
fifty  years  ago,  the  importance  of  a  scientific  study  of  the 
English  Language,  inserted  Anglo-Saxon  among  the  sub- 
jects on  which  a  course  of  lectures  was  to  be  delivered  by 
the  incumbent  of  the  chair  of  Modern  Languages.  The 
author,  whose  good  fortune  it  has  been  to  fill  that  chair  for 
many  years,  has  been  led  to  think  that  the  increasing 
interest  in  the  study  of  our  mother  tongue  called  for  some 
aid  and  systematic  guidance,  and  he  has  therefore  endeav- 
ored in  the  following  pages  to  point  out  those  topics  which 
deserve  most  attention,  and  those  methods  which  lead  to  a 
profitable  study  on  a  historic  basis.  He  hopes  that  his 
suggestions  will  call  more  general  attention  to  the  growing 
importance  of  a  new  science,  which  can  already  boast  of  a 
Miiller  in  England  and  a  Marsh  in  our  own  country,  and  to 
the  charms  of  the  inner  life  of  a  noble  old  tongue,  which, 
through  the  nations  who  speak  it,  now  rules  the  world  in 
undisputed  supremacy. 


University  of  Virginia, 
November,  1866. 


;niri7ERsiTr] 


CONTENTS. 


•— 

CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 
INTRODUCTORY  REMARKS 1 

CHAPTER  n. 

ENGLISH   RELATIONS 7 

CHAPTER  ni. 

ENGLISH  ELEMENTS 16 

CHAPTER  IV. 

LATIN  IN  ENGLISH ,  .  .26 

CHAPTER  V. 

ENGLISH   SOUNDS    ........  49 

CHAPTER  VI. 

ENGLISH  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  ENGLISH  ACCENT   .     .    67 

CHAPTER  YII. 

NAMES   OF    PLACES 81 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

NAMES   OF   MEN 114 

CHAPTER  IX. 

HOW  NOUNS   ARE   MADE  .  .  .  .  .  .  189 

CHAPTER  X. 

HOW  NOUNS   ARE   USED       .  .  .  .  .  .  .172 


VI  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XI. 

rAOB 

HOW  NOUNS   ARE   ABUSED 196 

CHAPTER  XU.  ^ 

ADJECTIVES 219 

CHAPTER  XIH. 

PRONOUNS 288 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

HOW   WE   COUNT 257 

CHAPTER    XV. 

LIVING  WORDS 272 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

ADVERBS 812 

CHAPTER  XVH. 

PARTICLES 828 

CHAPTER  XVm. 

SHIFTING  LETTERS 846 


L 


'^  or  tbm'^:^ 
STUDIES   IN  ENGLISH. 


CHAPTER    I. 

INTRODUCTORY    REMARKS. 
"'AvSp6i  XapaK-nip  eK  AiJyov  yvwpiferoi."  — Old  Comedy. 

The  youngest  of  all  European  idioms,  our  great  and 
noble  language  has  yet  spread  farthest  over  the  globe  and 
now  rules  the  world  without  a  rival.  More  than  fifty  mil- 
lions of  men,  forming  the  most  enterprising  race  upon 
earth,  speak  it  as  their  native  and  only  tongue.  The  elder 
cousin,  staid,  precise,  and  settled,  uses  it  at  home  in  his 
counting-room  ;  the  younger,  bold  and  adventurous,  carries 
it  with  him  as  he  roves  through  the  wide  world.  It  has 
long  since  become  the  great  instrument  of  European  cul- 
ture, superseding  the  Latin,  which  was  once  as  general, 
though  used  mainly  by  the  scholar  and  the  churchman, 
and  the  French,  the  language  of  courts  and  the  higher 
circles  of  the  Continent.  Even  in  the  early  days  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  the  gentle  Daniel,  the  Atticus  of  his  age,  foresaw 
its  future  greatness  and  sang :  — 

"  Who  knows  whither  we  may  vent 
The  treasure  of  our  tongue  ?    To  what  strange  shores 
This  gain  of  our  best  glory  may  be  sent 
T'  enrich  unknowing  nations  with  our  stores  ? 
What  worlds  in  the  yet  unformed  Occident 
May  come  refined  with  accents  that  are  ours  ?  " 

The  prophecy  has  come  true,  and  wherever  on  this  wide 
earth  men  may  meet,  in  the  merchant's  busy  marts  or 
on  the  prairies  and  pampas  of  America,  amid  the  nomadic 


2  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

tribes  of  Asia,  or  in  the  mysterious  heart  of  the  land  of 
Ham,  ice-bound  in  polar  regions  or  becalmed  under  the 
tropics,  —  everywhere  they  may  hear  words  familiar  to 
their  ear  and  dear  to  their  heart.  For  our  good  English 
has  become  the  language  of  the  world ;  and  strong  with 
the  colonist,  cunning  with  the  merchant,  and  bringing  the 
blessings  of  the  gospel  with  the  missionary,  it  promises 
soon  to  spread  the  benefits  of  civilization,  and  the  glory 
of  God  over  the  whole  earth. 

Surely,  then,  such  a  language  deserves  to  be  well  studied, 
to  be  thoroughly  known  by  those  whose  precious  birth- 
right it  is,  and  by  all  who  agree  with  old  Roger  Ascham 
that,  "  even  as  a  hawke  fleeth  not  hie  with  one  wing,  even 
so  a  man  reacheth  not  to  excellency  with  one  tongue.** 
Modern  science  has  done  much  to  acquaint  us  with  the 
form  and  the  nature  of  our  fellow-men.  It  goes  and 
counts  their  inches,  it  weighs  them  by  the  pound,  it  meas- 
ures their  skulls  and  examines  their  bumps,  it  counts  the 
years  of  their  life  and  the  hours  of  sickness,  it  knows 
how  many  cubic  feet  of  air  they  breathe  and  what  are  their 
chances  of  marriage  or  suicide  —  and  should  it  not  inquire 
what  they  tell  each  other  and  how  they  say  it?  Is  not 
language,  daguerreotyped  thought  as  we  may  well  call  it, 
more  expressive  than  manners  and  customs,  law  and  con- 
stitution, history  and  literature?  As  there  is  no  race 
among  men  that  possesses  a  character  so  sharply  defined 
as  the  English,  so  there  is  no  tongue  upon  earth  more 
clearly  expressive  of  the  nation's  mind.  Boldly  and  freely 
the  Englishman  uses  his  mother  tongue,  boldly  and  freely 
it  proclaims  him  abroad,  by  its  simple  forms,  its  nervous 
power,  its  deep  meaning.  It  never  forgets  its  own  dig- 
nity, its  noble  descent.  For  the  English  has  an  ancestry 
unparalleled  in  the  history  of  languages.  It  is  heir  to 
all  the  greatness  and  all  the  power  of  the  two  idioms  that 
represent  the  two  ruling  races  of  Christendom,  —  the 
Romance  and  the  Germanic.    Here  alone  they  are  fused 


INTRODUCTORY  REMARKS.  3 

together  to  form  a  harmonious  whole  of  unsurpassed  effi- 
cacy, in  striking  contrast  with  the  Roman  French  and 
the  Gothic  German.  Flowing  from  a  bold  mixture  of  such 
elements,  freeing  itself  by  the  power  of  its  own  mighty 
current  of  all  incumbrance  and  superfluity,  adopting  with 
wise  discrimination  whatever  it  finds  good  and  useful  in 
other  idioms,  as  historic  events  bring  it  in  contact  with 
foreign  nations,  it  has  become  well-nigh  incomparable,  the 
simplest  of  all  languages  in  form,  the  most  spiritual  in  its 
mode  of  expression. 

With  a  just  pride,  therefore,  based  on  a  legitimate  ap- 
preciation of  its  great  beauty  and  powers.  Englishmen 
and  all  their  descendants  have  ever  loved  it  dearly  and 
used  it  freely.  It  was  their  affection  for  it  that  made 
them,  centuries  ago,  scorn  to  pray  and  to  worship  their 
Maker  in  a  foreign  tongue  when  the  whole  of  Europe,  un- 
der the  sway  of  Rome,  yet  held  Latin  sacred.  They  used 
their  vernacular  before  all  their  kindred  races  for  prose 
writing,  and  thus  showed  their  early  mental  maturity,  since 
prose  requires  knowledge  and  deep  thought,  whilst  poetry 
may  at  least  and  often  does  content  itself  with  the  expres- 
sion of  feelings.  Never  did  foreign  idioms  play  the  mas- 
ter in  England,  as  they  did  on  the  Continent ;  never  did 
her  great  writers  disgrace  their  names  by  a  subservient 
preference  for  foreign  languages.  How  different  is  this 
from  the  German,  which  was  despised  by  the  great  Fred- 
erick, held  in  contempt  by  Leibnitz,  the  most  renowned 
philosopher  of  Germany,  and,  to  some  extent  at  least,  laid 
aside  even  in  our  day,  by  the  master  of  modern  writers, 
Alexander  von  Humboldt,  avowedly  for  the  purpose  of 
making  his  works,  written  in  French,  accessible  to  scholars 
of  all  countries.  Men  who  have  thus  abandoned  the  tongue 
of  their  fathers  may  have  gained  individually,  but  they 
have  lost  the  pleasure  of  writing  in  their  mother  tongue, 
inseparable  as  it  needs  must  be  of  greater  force  and 
stronger  individuality;  they  have  abandoned  at  once  all 


4  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

hope  of  the  eternal  renown  of  having  created  a  language 
like  the  immortal  Dante. 

The  same  love  and  pride,  which  Englishmen  thus  showed 
in  their  strong  attachment  to  their  language,  and  their  stub- 
born resistance  to  all  influence  from  abroad,  has  ever  pro- 
tected them  against  tyranny  at  home,  and  they  alone  of 
all  nations  have  always  enjoyed  unrestrained  freedom  of 
the  press.  Already  Hermes  notices  with  natural  satis- 
faction, that  England  never  knew  an  Index  Expurgatorius, 
nor  has  its  genius  ever  been  shackled  by  an  Inquisition. 
On  the  contrary,  this  freedom  of  speech  called  forth  and 
fostered  a'  corresponding  spirit  of  free  inquiry  and  led 
the  way  to  that  prudent  enjoyment  of  liberty,  of  which 
the  British  people  have  just  cause  to  be  proud,  amid  fallen 
thrones  and  shattered  democracies. 

With  all  these  attractions,  however,  and  in  spite  of  the 
rich  reward  held  out  to  the  diligent  student,  little  has  as 
yet  been  done  for  the  proper  study  of  English.  Much 
time  and  labor  are  bestowed  in  schools  and  at  home  on 
Greek  and  Latin ;  French  and  Italian,  Spanish  and  Ger- 
man, receive  their  share  of  attention,  but  everybody  is 
apparently  expected  to  know  English  by  instinct.  Where 
efforts  have  been  made  in  the  right  direction,  they  have 
been  thwarted  by  the  old  scholastic  method,  which  fills  our 
grammars  with  Latin  terms  and  contents  itself  with  long- 
winded  definitions.  We  seem  to  forget  entirely  that  lan- 
guage consists  of  two  parts,  like  man  himself — of  the  out- 
ward form,  the  word  corresponding  to  our  earth-bom  body, 
and  of  the  inner  meaning,  which  represents  the  immortal 
soul.  The  knowledge  of  words  themselves  is  worth  little. 
It  was  this  view  which  led  the  great  Polyglot-cardinal  to 
reply  peevishly  to  an  indiscreet  flatterer :  "  What  am  I  but 
an  ill-bound  dictionary?"  To  attain  a  thorough  knowl- 
edge of  the  meaning  of  words  and  of  the  manner  in 
which  at  different  times  and  under  changing  influences 
they  may  be  made  to  succeed  in  expressing  it  in  their  out- 


INTRODUCTORY  REMARKS.  5 

ward  form,  this  is  the  true  object  of  the  study  of  lan- 
guage. We  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  words 
are  the  only  medium  of  the  inner  life  between  man  and 
man,  and  that,  as  Montaigne  already  expressed  it,  "  Nous 
ne  sommes  hommes  et  nous  ne  tenons  les  uns  aiix  autres 
que  par  la  parole." 

Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that,  interesting  as  the  history 
of  words  is  —  and  Dean  Trench  surely  has  convinced  his 
many  readers  of  this  fact  —  there  is  also  a  history  of  lan- 
guages, which  may  be  studied  with  profit  and  pleasure. 
Their  pedigree  is  as  complete  and  as  full  of  adventure 
as  that  of  the  Rohans,  though  it  may  not  lead  us  with 
them  to  the  door  of  Noah's  Ark.  Few  subjects  in  the 
whole  range  of  human  knowledge  are  fuller  of  interest  and 
richer  in  instruction  than  the  gradual  development  of 
a  national  language,  exhibiting  as  in  a  mirror  the  many 
changes  going  on  in  the  nation's  mind.  We  all  have  felt 
this  more  or  less  distinctly,  when  we  have  marked  the^ 
difference  between  the  virtus  of  the  manly  Roman,  and 
the  vertu  of  the  degenerate  but  art-loving  Italian  of  our 
day,  or  when  the  knave  of  our  day  recalls  by  chance  to 
us  those  lines  of  the  version  of  the  great  Wickliffe,  in 
which  St.  Paul  calls  himself  reverently  "  a  knave  of  Jesus 
Christ."  It  is  not  accident  nor  arbitrary  power  that 
makes 

" words,  whilom  flourishing 


Pass  now  no  more,  but  banished  from  the  court, 
.  Dwell  with  disgrace  among  the  vulgar  sort, 
And  those,  which  eld's  strict  doom  did  disallow 
And  damn  for  bullion,  go  for  current  now." 

What  is  true  of  words,  is  equally  true  of  the  whole  lan- 
guage ;  it  ever  bears  on  its  surface  the  impress  of  the 
mind  of  the  people  by  whom  it  is  spoken,  and  he  who 
studies  it  with  History  by  his  side  and  Philosophy  coming 
to  his  aid,  will  soon  find  that  it  leads  him  directly  to  the 
most  retired  and  inmost  parts  of  the  soul  of  a  nation,  the 
secrets  of  which  no  other  key  can  unlock. 


6  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  this  Essay  to  throw  out  some  sug- 
gestions and  to  furnish  some  information  that  may  aid  in 
thus  studying  a  language,  of  which  the  master  of  philol- 
ogy, Grimm,  says  that  "  in  wealth,  wisdom,  and  strict  econ- 
omy, none  of  the  living  languages  can  vie  with  it."  The 
richer,  the  wiser,  and  the  more  perfect  in  its  mechanism 
it  is,  the  greater  of  course  the  difficulty  of  appreciating  it 
fully  and  of  entering  deeply  into  its  secret  chambers. 
Noble  efforts,  however,  have  been  made  toward  this  end 
in  England  and  abroad,  and  there  is  reason  to  hope  that 
we  shall  soon  be  fully  acquainted  with  the  private  as  well 
as  the  public  history  of  our  language,  and  then  agree  with 
the  sentiment  of  an  enthusiastic  admirer,  who  sings,  that  — 

"  Stronger  far  than  hosts  that  march 
With  battle-flags  unfurled, 
It  goes  with  Freedom,  Thought,  and  Truth, 
To  rouse  and  rule  the  world." 


r^*^  Of  TEW        < 

CHAPTER  n. 

ENGLISH    RELATIONS. 

"  Idioms  have  their  kindred  as  well  as  men."  —  Duponceau. 

When  a  man  rises  to  eminence  in  our  midst,  friend 
and  foe  become  alike  anxious  to  ascertain  who  his  fore- 
fathers were  and  what  relations  he  has  now  among  men. 
To  trace  his  pedigree  back  beyond  a  few  generations  is 
generally  found  a  difficult  task,  which  is  finally,  if  not  alto- 
gether abandoned,  as  is  apt  to  be  the  case  in  this  country, 
referred  to  the  Herald's  College,  where  fact  and  fancy  are 
happily  blended.  There  it  is  all  well  ascertained  and  duly 
attested,  but  in  spite  of  shield  and  motto  we  do  not  believe 
the  statement  quite  as  readily  and  as  fully  as  the  ingenious 
officers  would  have  us  do.  It  is  not  otherwise  with  lan- 
guages. Let  one  of  them  become  great  and  powerful,  and 
at  once  curiosity  and  genuine  interest  are  eagerly  at  work, 
to  ascertain  the  early  history  of  the  idiom.  Here  also  easy 
and  complete  solutions  are  freely  offered.  Now  the  San- 
scrit is  declared  to  be  the  common  ancestor  of  all  lan- 
guages, and  now  the  Hebrew ;  some  prefer  the  Celtic,  and 
others  again  trace  all  words  back  to  the  famous  nine  sylla- 
bles of  the  great  Murray.  In  our  day,  even,  champions 
take  up  arms  in  behalf  of  the  Interjections,  and  proclaim 
them  to  have  been  the  original  words  from  which  all  others 
have  been  derived,  somewhat  after  the  manner  of  Darwin's 
great  theory,  and  immediately  they  are  met  by  the  advo- 
cates of  the  famous  Bow-wow  theory,  as  Max  Muller  calls 
it,  who  believe  in  the  cries  of  animals  and  the  voices  of 
Nature  as  having  taught  man  his  speech. 


8  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

In  spite  of  all  these  varied  explanations,  however,  the 
first. origin  of  language  is  still,  to  this  day,  one  of  those 
mysteries  which  a  wise  Providence  has,  for  some  good  pur- 
pose, concealed  as  yet  from  our  eye,  even  as  our  great 
mother  Nature  hides  the  grain  in  her  dark  bosom,  until  it 
breaks  as  a  tender  blade  through  the  clod  to  greet  the  light 
of  day.  Whether  language  be  a  gift  granted  to  man,  like 
all  other  faculties,  at  the  time  of  his  creation,  or  whether 
he  be  capable  to  produce  and  form  it  by  means  of  his  own 
unaided  powers,  is  a  much  vexed  question.  Nor  have  the 
wisest  among  us  yet  agreed  as  to  the  unity  of  language,  for 
while  some  admit  without  doubt  or  gainsay  the  simple 
statement  of  Holy  Writ,  from  the  first  moment  of  man's 
existence  to  the  confounding  of  lips  at  Babel,  others  insist  - 
upon  this  view,  that  as  races  owe  their  origin  to  different 
pairs  of  first  men,  so  languages  also  have  arisen  from  as 
many  different  mother  tongues.  Fortunately,  it  is  not  im- 
possible to  understand  English  well  without  tracing  it  back 
to  the  creation  of  the  world.  We  are  quite  sure  that  the 
poor  Egyptian  boy,  who  was  sent,  with  a  goat  for  his  sole 
companion,  into  the  Libyan  desert  to  teach  Psammitichus 
by  the 'first  words  he  would  utter  the  original  tongue  of  the 
earth,  did  not  speak  English ;  and  as  the  Spanish  have 
settled  it  to  their  own  satisfaction  that  Castilian  is  the  lan- 
guage which  has  ever  been  used  in  heaven,  we  dare  not 
present  an  equal  claim  for  our  English. 

This  only  we  know,  that  it  had  its  first  origin,  as  far  as 
is  known  to  history  and  to  tradition,  in  the  Orient.  Ex 
Oriente  lux,  seems  to  be  true  with  regard  to  languages  as 
well  as  with  creeds.  For  our  researches  point  all  to  the 
one  great  fact,  that,  if  we  set  aside  the  comparatively  unex-' 
plored  territories  of  the  American  and  African  idioms,  to-'*i 
gether  with  the  Chinese,  there  are  in  the  whole  kingdom 
of  speech  but  three  grammatical  families  to  which  every 
known  dialect  can  be  referred  with  unerring  certainty. 
Each  of  these  families  bears  its  own  distinctive  marks,  so 


ENGLISH  RELATIONS.  9 

clearly  defined  that  there  is  no  mingling  between  them,  no 
possibility  of  mistaking  the  allegiance  of  even  the  latest 
descendants.  The  white,  the  red,  and  the  black  races  are 
not  more  strikingly  different  from  each  other  in  color  and 
character  than  the  Shemitic,  the  Aryan,  and  the  nomadic 
Turanian  families  of  languages.  With  the  first  and  the  last 
of  these  groups  our  English  has  nothing  in  common,  though 
the  Bible  has  made  some  Shemitic  terms  dear  and  sacred 
to  us,  and  trade  and  commerce  have  familiarized  us  with  a 
few  Turanian  words.  But  there  is  neither  kindred  nor 
sympathy  between  those  languages  and  our  own.  For  the 
English  is  a  child  of  the  great  Aryan  family,  so  called  from 
its  ancient  homestead  in  Asia,  now  known  as  Iran.  Thence 
all  the  descendants  of  that  most  noble  family  have  spread 
westward,  until  Asia  and  Europe  formed,  as  to  language, 
but  one  great  country,  and  their  vast  brotherhood  became 
known  as  the  Indo-European.  All  the  members  of  this 
family  trace  back  their  origin  to  one  great  central  language, 
and  all  of  them  abandoned  their  first  home  in  times  far 
earlier  than  those  when  Homer  sang,  when  Zoroaster  gave 
his  law^s,  and  the  poets  of  the  Vedas  wrote  their  marvelous 
myths.  All,  moreover,  from  the  oldest  known,  the  San- 
scrit, to  the  youngest  born,  our  English,  are  but  varied 
forms  of  the  same  type,  —  modifications  of  the  same  lan- 
guage as  it  was  once  spoken  in  Asia.  When  they  dwelt 
there,  and  where  they  ruled,  we  cannot  now  ascertain,  for 
their  early  history  goes  back  far  beyond  historic  chronol- 
ogy ;  and  yet  that  they  possess  an  existence  and  a  reality  is 
proved  by  inductive  evidence  beyond  all  cavil  and  doubt. 
But  this  is  not  all,  for  recent  discoveries  have  taught  us 
even  more  surprising  facts  regarding  these  mysterious  an- 
cestors of  our  English.  The  most  careful  researches,  the 
most  sifting  investigations,  have  failed  to  bring  to  light  a 
single  new  root  that  has  been  added  to  the  first  common 
inheritance  of  these  dialects,  or  a  single  new  element  that 
has  been  created  in  the  gradual  formation  of  their  grammar 


10  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

since  their  first  separation!  On  the  other  hand,  it  has 
been  discovered  that  many  words,  which  ^vitnessed  that 
early  breaking  up  of  the  family,  are  still  living  in  India  and 
Europe  alike,  and  thus  bear  evidence,  now,  of  the  common 
first  origin.  The  terms  for  God,  house,  father  and  mother, 
son  and  daughter,  heart  and  tears,  axe  and  tree,  dog  and 
cow,  identical  in  all  Indo-European  families,  have  thus 
been  well  compared  to  watchwords  of  a  great  army  on  its 
solemn  march  around  the  globe.  For  many  of  these  terms, 
which  sprang  up  more  than  four  thousand  years  ago  at 
Agra,  at  Delhi,  and  Benares,  have  but  quite  lately  scaled 
the  Rocky  Mountains  of  Western  America,  and  are  rapidly 
filling  the  forests  on  the  shores  of  the  Pacific. 

Of  the  many  members  of  this  family,  seven  have  risen 
to  such  distinction  as  to  have  become,  in  their  turn,  found- 
ers of  great  and  powerful  races.  Two  alone  have  main- 
tained themselves  at  home : 

1.  The  Indie,  represented  of  old  by  the  Sanscrit,  which 
was  spoken  more  than  fifteen  hundred  years  before  Christ, 
and  yet  produced  in  that  hoary  antiquity  already  the  far- 
famed  Vedas.  Its  living  forms  are  the  Pracrit  and  Tali, 
and  another  strange,  uncouth  language,  long  considered  a 
mere  jargon,  and  then  traced  back  to  ancient  Egypt  or 
Palestine,  but  now  re-established  in  its  genuine  birthright. 
This  is  the  idiom  spoken  by  the  Gypsies,  who  have  at  last 
succeeded  in  proving  their  melancholy  claim  to  be  consid- 
ered exiles  from  Hindostan,  their  native  land.  It  is  they 
alone  who  have  brought  the  few  strange  forms  of  Sanscrit 
words  we  know  to  Western  Europe,  as  parts  of  their  quaint 
language,  in  which  the  oldest  words  of  ancient  idioms  min- 
gle with  the  latest  offspring  of  modern  tongues. 

2.  The  Iranic,  famous  under  the  name  of  Zend,  as  the 
language  of  Zoroaster's  great  work,  Zenda  Vesta,  and  of 
late  much  endeared  to  us  by  the  remarkable  discoveries 
made  in  the  wedge-shaped  inscriptions  of  Cyrus,  Darius, 
and  Xerxes,  which   so  strikingly  illustrate   and   confirm 


ENGLISH  RELATIONS.  11 

numerous,  hitherto  unexplained,  statements  of  the  Bible. 
Both  languages,  however,  are  like  the  pure  Sanscrit,  now 
dead  languages,  and  survive  only  in  the  slightly  altered 
form  of  Armenian  and  the  national  language  of  the  Per- 
sian, who  could  boast  already  a  thousand  years  before 
Christ,  of  an  illustrious  poet,  Ferdusi.  The  other  promi- 
nent members  of  this  family  have,  with  the  races  that 
spoke  them,  left  the  cradle  of  mankind  in  Central  Asia, 
and,  in  successive  waves,  made  their  way  westward.  One 
after  another  the  idioms  of  the  ruling  nations  of  the  world, 
they  have  each  been  supreme  for  a  time,  and  then  given 
way  to  a  successor.     The  oldest  of  all  these  is  — 

3.  The  Celtic,  which  Herodotus  already  knew  as  the  lan- 
guage of  a  people  that  had  passed  even  beyond  the  pillars 
of  Hercules,  and  who  are,  therefore,  commonly  looked  upon 
as  the  oldest  settlers  in  Europe.  At  the  very  first  dawn  of 
history  it  is  found  as  the  idiom  used  by  the  masters  of  Eu- 
rope. It  was  heard  alike  in  England  and  in  Ireland,  in 
France  and  in  Spain,  in  Switzerland  and  in  the  eastern 
regions  as  far  back  as  Thracia.  But  its  splendor  has  de- 
parted as  the  sceptre  has  been  wrested  from  the  Celtic 
race,  and  now  it  is  spoken  by  little  more  than  ten  mill- 
ions. But  it  still  bears  marks  of  a  strange  individuality  ;' 
its  double  words  are  so  loosely  joined  together  that  the 
original  elements  may  be  easily  seen  and  severed,  and  its 
mode  of  inflection  differs  strangely  from  that  of  all  other 
languages,  inasmuch  as  it  affects  not,  as  usually,  the  final, 
but  changes,  instead,  the  initial  letters. 

In  Great  Britain  it  has,  from  of  old,  exhibited  a  strict 
line  of  division  between  the  Cymric  or  Old  British,  and  the 
Gadhelic  or  Irish.  The  former  is  now  represented  by  the 
Welsh,  which  alone  survives  in  full  vigor.  The  Cornish 
can  hardly  be  said  to  exist  any  longer  except  as  a  written 
language,  for  the  last  person  who  spoke  it  as  her  mother- 
tongue  is  reported  to  have  died  more  than  seventy  years 
ago.    The  Armorican,  introduced  by  fugitive  Britons  into 


12  STUDIES  IX  ENGLISH- 

that  part  of  northern  France  which,  from  the  new  settlers, 
took  its  name  of  Little  Britanny,  resembles  the  Welsh  so 
nearly  that  Count  de  la  Yillemarque,  a  native  of  Bretagne, 
who  used  it  in  addressing  a  literary  club  in  Wales,  was  un- 
derstood by'all  who  were  present 

The  Gadhelic  or  Gaelic  survives  as  Erse  in  Ireland, 
where  it  still  claims  to  be  considered  a  national  tongue. 
The  Gaelic  proper,  carried  across  the  channel  to  Scot- 
land, is  now  only  heard  in  the  remoter  vallej-s  of  the 
Grampian  Mountains  and  in  some  parishes  of  the  country 
lying  between  Cairn  and  Caithness.  The  Isle  of  3Ian  en- 
joys its  own  Celtic  dialect,  the  Manx,  which  is,  however, 
mixed  with  Danish  and  other  Norse  elements. 

Between  these  dialects  and  our  English  there  is  no  other 
relationship  than  that  of  common  descent,  obscured  by  an 
early  separation,  which  dates  back  to  very  ancient  times. 
The  mechanical  admixture  of  Celtic  words  and  forms  of 
expression  is  but  small,  as  there  seems  to  have  existed  a 
strong,  reciprocal  repulsion  between  the  Celts  and  all  other 
European  families  and  their  languages.  Theirs  was  the 
fierce  warfere  between  the  Druid  and  the  priest,  the  mis- 
tietoe  and  the  palm,  and  the  victorious  cross  in  those  days 
spared  not  the  beaten  foe.  Even  in  those  counties  of 
Wales,  which  were  last  Anglicized,  not  a  dozen  words  have 
been  adopted  by  the  Saxon  from  the  Celt  —  his  mouth  ab- 
hors their  fluent  gutturals. 

After  the  Celts  came  those  mysterious  wanderers,  whose 
sea-faring  life  marked  them  early  among  the  nations  of  the 
earth,  and  earned  for  them  the  name  of  Pelasgi.  Their 
idioms  now  in  turn  ruled  the  world,  as 

4.  HeUenic  in  fair  Hellas,  after  the  four  dialects  of  ear- 
lier days,  the  Doric,  Aeolic.  Attic,  and  Ionic  had  formed 
the  common  language  of  ancient  Greece,  and  as 

5.  Italic^  which,  in  its  new  home  of  Latium,  became 
known  as  Latin.  Like  the  Greek  it  also  arose  from  a  mix- 
ture of  early  dialects :  the  Oscan,  spoken  by  the  Samnites, 


ENGLISH  EELATIOXS.  13 

and  not  unknown  to  Borne  as  late  even  as  the  days  of  the 
Caesars,  the  Umbrian,  which  could  boast  of  the  earliest 
priestly  literature  and  the  renowned  seven  "  Tables  of  Igu- 
vium,"  and  the  Latin  of  Latium.  In  its  turn  it  has,  after 
the  hH  of  Rome  and  the  advent  of  new  races,  divided  into 
numerous  branches,  and  bequeathed  to  our  day  the  beauti- 
ful dialects,  which  we  know  as  Romance  languages.  Its 
descendants  now  spoken  are  the  Italian,  the  TTallachian,  a 
quaint  form  of  Latin  mixed  with  Turkish,  Greek,  and  an- 
cient Illyrian,  the  Spanish  with  its  younger  son  the  Portu- 
guese, the  French,  and  the  Provencal. 

Among  these  the  English  finds  itself  already  more  at 
home,  and  a  striking  family-likeness  may  be  discovered 
here  and  there.  The  French  enters  actually  into  our  ver- 
nacular, and  claims,  since  the  days  of  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, a  large  share  of  our  vocabulary.  What  makes  it 
more  important  to  us,  is  the  fact  that  the  distribution  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  left  to  chance  only,  and  close  obser- 
vation will  easily  show  the  remarkable  lines  that  divide  the 
two  elements.  Where  the  true  Saxon  words  have  to  do 
with  the  sensible  world,  the  French  words  deal  with  the 
spiritual ;  the  former  stand  for  things  particular  and  con- 
crete, the  latter  for  things  general  and  abstract  Still, 
there  ever  remains  something  foreign  and  uncongenial  in 
the  descendants  of  the  Romance  family,  which  shows 
clearly  that  there  is  no  near  kinship  between  them  and  the 
older,  dearer  part  of  our  English.  "  English  words,**  says 
Hare, "  sound  best  from  English  lips,"  and  though  there  are 
many  French  terras,  which  we  could  not  well  do  without, 
we  still  prefer,  in  £uniliar  language  and  for  ordinary  pur- 
poses, the  good  old  Saxon  terms.  Thus  we  say  rather  like 
than  similar,  give  than  present,  beg  than  solicit,  kinsman 
than  relation,  neighborhood  than  vicinity,  and  praise  than 
encomiimi. 

We  feel  much  more  at  home  with  the  members  of  the 
6.  Teutonic  &mily,  in  whose  midst  our  English  stands  as 


14  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

the  fairest  and  strongest  of  all.  Here  it  meets  above  all 
the  High  German,  the  oldest  in  culture,  the  richest  in  pure 
vowels,  euphony  and  vigor,  the  greatest  in  intellectual 
strength  for  nearly  ten  centuries.  Inferior  by  far  is  the 
elder  brother,  who  sold  his  birthright  long  ago,  the  Low 
German,  although  its  oldest  branch,  the  Gothic,  was  spoken 
by  the  conquerors  of  Imperial  Rome,  the  followers  of  Alaric, 
Theodoric,  and  Attila,  and  grand  old  Ulfilas  himself,  who 
used  it,  not  four  hundred  years  after  Christ,  to  render  the 
word  of  God  for  the  first  time  into  a  modern  tongue.  A 
lowly  branch  of  this  family,  the  Anglo-Saxon,  found  its 
way  from  the  Continent  and  Southern  Denmark  to  the  dis- 
tant shores  of  England,  and  there  rose  slowly  and  painfully, 
to  become  in  our  day  the  language  of  the  world.  The  Old 
Dutch,  which  has  gained  its  independence  and  a  literature 
of  its  own  only  since  the  thirteenth  century,  is  its  nearest 
relation,  and  together  with  the  old  Frisic  on  the  northern 
coast  of  Germany,  which  is  unfortunately  dying  out  since 
the  Frisians  have  been  held  in  subjefction  by  foreign  rulers, 
furnishes  the  best  illustrations  and  exhibits  the  most  strik- 
ing resemblance  to  our  Old  English. 

Of  scarcely  inferior  rank  and  antiquity  with  the  High 
and  the  Low  German  are  the  members  of  the  Scandinavian 
family.  The  Swedish  preserves  its  oldest  spoken  forms  in 
a  few  remote  valleys  of  the  interior,  whilst  the  Icelandic, 
brought  from  Sweden  to  the  Ultima  Thule,  can  boast  of 
the  oldest  written  forms  of  these  idioms.  The  Danish  and 
the  Norwegian  are  comparatively  modem,  and  can  hardly 
lay  claims  to  be  considered  truly  national  tongues,  though 
the  former  has  a  literature  worthy  of  the  highly  cultivated 
people  by  whom  it  is  spoken. 

These,  then,  are  the  nearest  relations  our  English  has 
among  the  many  idioms  spoken  in  Europe.  The  languages 
of  the  first  wave  of  immigration  have  receded  to  the  far 
West  of  the  Continent,  and  barely  survive  there  in  daily  de- 
clining vigor  and  in  wholly  changed  forms.    Those  of  the 


ENGLISH  RELATIONS.  15 

second  wave,  the  Germanic,  rule  now  in  the  centre  of  Eu- 
rope, and  between  them  and  English  the  feeling  of  kindred 
is  strong  and  the  facility  of  interchange  most  abundant. 
The  last-comer  in  Europe, 

7.  The  Sclavonic  family  has  not  yet  penetrated  to  the 
centre,  though  it  is  firmly  and  indefatigably  pushing  its  out- 
posts farther  and  farther  westward.  It  holds  supreme  but 
somewhat  barbarous  sway  over  the  gigantic  East,  and  in  the 
form  of  powerful  Russian  claims  the  assistance  of  its  kins- 
men, the  Polish,  Bohemian,  and  others,  to  aid  in  establish- 
ing a  vast  Panslavism.  With  them  our  English  has  noth' 
ing  in  common  ;  there  may  even  be  said  to  exist  a  feeling 
of  antagonism,  as  if  the  languages,  like  the  races,  foresaw 
that  the  day  cannot  be  far,  when  they  will  have  to  struggle, 
as  their  predecessors  have  done  before  them,  for  the  scep- 
tre of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  m. 


ENGLISH     ELEMENTS. 


''  The  English,  thanks  to  its  yaried  elements,  ia  a  veliicle  of  marvelous  power  and 
beauty  for  the  expression  of  thought." 

A  SCION  of  the  great  Germanic  family,  our  English  is 
the  direct  and  legitimate  descendant  of  the  Anglo-Saxon, 
but  in  the  course  of  its  long  and  prosperous  career  it  has 
entered  into  many  an  alliance  with  other  idioms  and  taken 
at  least  one  other  language,  the  French,  to  its  heart  and 
home,  fairly  dividing  with  it  the  rule  of  Great  Britain.  It 
may  well  be  said  that  in  English  all  the  existing  nationali- 
ties of  Europe  —  the  Sclavonic  alone  excepted  —  meet  and 
mingle  together.  The  Celtic  race,  the  oldest  of  them  all, 
has  nowhere  preserved  itself  so  long  and  so  nobly  as  here ; 
the  Germanic  has  here  borne  its  earliest  fruit,  shown  its 
greatest  independence,  and  held  its  own  bravely  to  this  day 
against  foe  and  rival ;  then  the  Northman  vigorously  en- 
tered upon  the  scene,  and  though  possessing  great  power 
of  his  own  blended  willingly  with  the  Saxon,  and  thus 
added  the  last  elements  wanting  to  national  greatness. 
The  Latin  of  ancient  Rome,  of  the  Church,  and  of  Modem 
Science,  brought  each  its  fair  offering ;  the  Greek  has  sup- 
plied some  recent  wants,  and  hardly  a  race  upon  earth  but 
has  sent  a  tribute  to  the  mighty  idiom.  The  immense 
power  of  such  a  mingling  of  dialects,  each  endowed  with 
its  own  peculiar  strength,  was  early  seen.  The  first  result 
was  not  the  adoption  of  any  one  prevailing  speech,  but  the 
formation  of  a  jargon,  which  not  until  the  fourteenth 
century  adopted  a  fixed,  though  degenerate  form.      And 


ENGLISH  ELEMENTS.  17 

yet,  but  a  few  generations  later  this  tongue  possessed 
already  the  greatest  poet  the  human  race  has  ever  known, 
and  since  then  it  has  become  the  first  of  all  languages 
spoken. 

We  would  err  grievously,  however,  if  we  were  to  con- 
clude from  this  variety  of  elements,  which  constitute  the 
idiom,  that  it  is  a  mere  farrago  of  discordant  material,  or 
even  a  mere  continuation  of  one  or  more  of  the  parent 
stocks.  As  a  living  organism  English  is  an  entirely  new 
individual.  It  is  neither  Anglo-Saxon  in  a  new  garb, 
nor  the  offspring  of  a  union  between  Saxon  and  Norman 
French.  Both  these  languages  were  inflected,  and  had 
their  rigidly  fixed  syntax  dependent  on  inflections.  In  the 
continued  struggle,  however,  during  which  the  two  tongues 
fought  for  supremacy,  both  lost  all  the  looser  forms  and 
more  changeable  modes  of  expression,  retaining  little  be- 
yond the  essentials  of  their  substance.  These  the  new 
idiom,  English,  freed  from  all  inflections,  and  subjected 
to  entirely  new  laws  of  syntax,  which  now  make  up  its 
striking  and  exclusive  character  among  the  languages  of 
Europe. 

Nevertheless  it  is  well  worth  while  to  inquire  what  were 
the  different  elements,  the  amalgamation  of  which  could 
produce  such  remarkable  results.  The  very  heart  of  the 
language  is,  of  course,  Anglo-Saxon,  but  this  was  already 
not  a  simple  idiom,  but  a  mixture  of  various  dialects, 
belonging  to  different  races.  The  latter  belonged,  however, 
all  to  the  one  great  German  people,  upon  whose  lands  the 
increasing  power  of  Imperial  Rome  encroached  from  year 
to  year  more  forcibly.  As  her  victorious  legions  pressed 
the  unhappy  tribes  more  closely,  dislodging  and  expelling 
one  after  another  from  their  native  seats,  they  naturally 
retreated  in  the  line  which  offered  them  the  greatest 
advantages.  This  was  marked  out  by  the  great  rivers,  the 
Rhine,  the  Elbe  and  their  tributaries,  all  flowing  in  a 
north-westerly  direction,  and  offering  at  the  same  time  a 
2 


18  STUDIES  IX  ENGLISH. 

ready  means  of  protection  in  the  rear,  and  an  easy  outlet 
in  front  toward  not  far  distant  lands. 

Like  all  rude  races,  the  Germans  of  those  days  suffered 
under  the  sad  effects  of  jealousies  of  tribe,  of  family,  and 
of  class,  losing  thus  in  their  earliest  days,  as  in  our  own 
century,  by  the  want  of  unity,  the  enjoyment  of  that  vast 
power  to  which  they  are  so  well  entitled  by  their  numbers, 
their  strength,  and  their  intellectual  superiority.  Hence 
they  did  not  migrate  in  large  bodies,  and  when  they  came 
to  England,  they  presented  neither  political  nor  linguistic 
unity,  but  they  came  in  detached  numbers,  with  varied 
peculiarities  and  distinct  unwritten  dialects. 

When  we  speak  of  a  conquest  by  Anglo-Saxons,  there- 
fore, we  mean  by  it  a  gradual  settlement  of  the  British 
isles  by  a  number  of  successive  and  totally  distinct  bodies 
of  invaders  from  Germany,  representing  in  unknown  pro- 
portions all  the  races  and  tongues,  which  are  found  between 
the  Elbe  and  the  Eider,  with  contributions  from  other 
tribes  dwelling  on  the  Atlantic  and  the  Baltic.  At  a  time 
when  history  is  still  silent  and  tradition  our  only  authority, 
it  is  difficult  to  speak  with  precision.  So  much  only  can 
be  stated  with  certainty,  that  among  these  various  elements 
three  stood  preeminent  at  the  first  invasion  and  have  since 
left  their  impress  unmistakably  on  the  character  and  the 
language  of  the  English  people. 

These  are  the  Jutes  from  southern  Denmark,  who,  pressed 
upon  by  their  neighbors,  the  Danes,  left  their  native  land 
and  settled  in  Kent,  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  part  of  the 
opposite  coast  of  Hampshire.  Then  there  were  the  Saxons 
proper,  from  the  modem  Duchy  of  Holstein,  between  the 
Elbe  and  the  Eider,  a  race  of  pirates  and  marauders, 
against  whom  Theodosius  fought  and  triumphed  under  the  • 
Emperor  Valentinian,  and  thus  earned  the  name  of  Saxoni- 
cus.  Their  inroads  became  from  year  to  year  bolder  and 
soon  so  frequent,  that  in  the  fourth  century  the  sea-coast 
of  England  was  known  as  Litus  Saxonicum.     At  last  they 


ENGLISH  ELEMENTS.  19 

made  themselves  masters  of  all  the  lands  south  of  the 
Thames.  Extending  their  conquest  east,  west,  and  south, 
they  founded  the  kingdoms  of  Essex,  Wessex,  and  Sussex, 
and  in  the  centre  of  all  Middlesex.  Great  must  have  been 
their  power  and  permanent  their  influence,  for  to  this  day 
the  Welsh  and  the  Gaels,  following  the  example  of  their 
forefathers,  call  the  English  language  Saesonaeg,  and  the 
Scotch  Highlanders  speak  in  like  manner  of  their  neigh- 
bors as  Sassenachs.  Finally,  there  came  Angles  from  that 
part  of  Slesvic,  which  still  bears  their  name,  between  the' 
Eider  and  an  arm  of  the  Baltic.  They  took  all  the  rest 
of  the  island,  founding  for  their  folk  the  two  kingdoms  of 
the  north  and  the  south,  Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  and  extend- 
ing in  Northumberland  northward  to  the  Firth  and  the 
Clyde. 

The  Britons  by  no  means  succumbed  at  once.  On  the 
contrary,  they  fought  a  noble  battle  for  their  land,  their 
liberty  and  their  faith  —  a  battle  which  lasted  for  nearly 
three  centuries.  Fate,  however,  was  against  them.  They 
had  fulfilled  the  purposes  for  which  their  race  had  been 
sent  to  these  islands,  and  at  last  their  Arthur  lay  buried  at 
Glastonbury,  and  nothing  was  left  them  but  the  hope,  that 
he  will  one  day  come  back,  rising  once  more  in  his  might, 
and  restore  their  former  glory.  When  the  struggle  was 
over,  the  Saxons  were  masters  of  the  land,  but  it  was  not 
on  the  battle-field  that  they  had  conquered  the  fierce  Celt. 
Their  victory  was  achieved,  slowly  and  painfully,  in  the 
daily  battle  of  life,  in  a  silent  but  unceasing  strife,  not  by 
the  strong  hand  and  the  bloody  sv/ord,  but  by  the  power 
of  a  superior  will  and  a  better  mind.  Their  energy  and 
their  stubbornness  carried  the  day.  The  brilliant  but 
unsteady  and  easily  wearied  Celt  was  no  match  for  their 
unceasing  perseverance.  For  a  time,  the  two  races  lived 
apart  and  yet  alongside  of  each  other,  the  Briton  under 
the  shelter  of  his  fortified  towns,  the  legacy  of  his  Roman 
masters,  the  Saxon  in  the  open  country,  where  "  he  loved  to 


20  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

hear  the  lark  sing."  Scanty  as  their  intercourse  was,  it 
led,  in  the  order  of  nature,  to  a  gradual  mingling  of  races 
and  exchange  of  words.  Saxon  princes  appear  under 
Celtic  names,  and  Celtic  tools  became  known  by  Saxon 
titles.  After  a  while  the  weaker  disappeared  step  by  step, 
whilst  the  stronger,  growing  apace,  not  only  spread  from 
district  to  district,  but  also  worked  its  way  slowly  to  a 
common  unity.  By  the  time  the  miscalled  Heptarchy  came 
to  an  end,  and  the  Saxon  sovereignties  were  all  united  in 
the  person  of  Egbert,  the  Saxons  had  conquered.  Their 
enemies  were  driven  to  ;*emote  mountains  and  inaccessible 
morasses  in  the  far  off  corners  of  the  land,  and  with  them 
their  speech  also  disappeared.  Even  the  few  Celtic  words, 
that  had  been  temporarily  grafted  on  the  Saxon,  withered 
again  as  they  received  no  more  nourishment  from  the 
parent  stem,  and  soon  Saxon  stood  alone  as  the  national 
tongue  of  England. 

But  the  rule  of  the  Saxon,  also,  did  not  long  remain 
undisturbed,  for  as  the  weak  Britons  had  fallen  an  easy 
prey  to  the  bold  Saxons,  so  the  disunited  Saxons  suc- 
cumbed in  their  turn  to  the  Normans.  Those  bold  warriors 
and  daring  sailors,  who  according  to  the  Chronicle  of  St. 
Gallen  had  already  in  the  days  of  Charlemagne  passed  the 
Straits  of  Gibraltar,  and  whom  Charles  the  Bald  had  sent 
out  of  France,  not  with  steel,  which  might  have  kept  them 
away,  but  with  seven  thousand  pounds  of  silver,  that  but 
served  to  invite  them  again,  subsequently  crossed  the 
channel  and  won  all  the  fair  lands  of  P^ngland  in  a  single 
day.  They  triumphed  at  Hastings,  and  without  mercy  and 
without  ceremony  they  made  themselves  masters  of  the 
land.  The  Domesday  Book  shows  us  now,  how  the  broad 
acres,  the  lofty  castles,  and  even  the  fair  daughters  of  the 
Saxon  nobles  were  given  away  with  lavish  liberality  to 
Norman  knight  and  Flemish  weaver,  to  the  brave  in  purple 
born  and  to  the  cunning  adventurer  from  foreign  lands. 
But  there  was  that  in  the  Saxon  people  which  made  them 


ENGLISH  ELEMENTS.  21 

live  even  when  almost  crushed  by  their  fierce  masters ; 
there  was  a  spirit  in  their  language  which  preserved  it 
from  destruction,  when  utter  extinction  seemed  almost 
inevitable. 

The  nature  of  the  conquest,  moreover,  aided  the  process 
of  reconstruction.  In  the  first  invasion  the  Anglo-Saxons 
had  thrown  themselves  upon  the  British  isles  as  the  object 
of  their  hostility,  as  well  as  of  their  cupidity.  They  had 
made  them  their  own  by  the  simple  process  of  clearing  the 
land  of  its  occupants,  killing  those  who  resisted,  and  driving 
away  those  who  preferred  flight  to  destruction.  This  was 
the  conquest  of  barbarism.  Very  different  was  that  of  the 
Normans.  They  knew  too  well  the  value  of  their  colossal 
booty  to  expose  it  to  ruin,  and  they  appreciated  fully  the 
necessity  of  preserving  the  living  intelligence  and  the 
matured  skill  which  had  produced  its  material  wealth. 
Their  conquest  consisted  simply  in  the  subjugation  of  the 
people  to  a  foreign  government.  There  was  no  barbarism 
here.  Both  nations,  the  conquered  and  the  conquering, 
were  far  advanced  in  civilization  ;  the  English  boasting  of 
a  literature  several  centuries  old  and  a  church  unsurpassed 
in  splendor  and  in  learning,  the  French,  though  of  more 
recent  date,  already  famous  among  the  nations  of  the  earth, 
for  their  skill  in  arms  and  in  arts.  Besides,  the  Conqueror 
had  taken  care  to  have  his  title  well  established  in  the 
minds  of  many  Englishmen  even,  and  to  be  sanctioned  by 
the  express  approval  of  the  Church.  His  friends  in  Eng- 
land wei-e  probably  not  less  numerous  or  powerful  than  the 
Whigs  who  brought  over  his  namesake  six  hundred  years 
later.  All  these  causes  combined  to  rob  the  conquest 
of  much  of  its  ordinary  destructiveness,  and  to  prepare 
a  speedy  coalition  between  the  two  races  thus  brought  in 
contact. 

The  only  danger  that  threatened  the  English  race  and 
their  language,  was  the  necessity  which  forced  the  Con- 
queror to  surrender  his  new  subjects  to  more  or  less  spolia- 


'XJiri7BRSIT7 


22  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

tion  for  the  sake  of  rewarding  those  who  had  aided  him  in 
his  enterprise.  Thus  the  balance  of  power  was  at  once 
destroyed,  and  the  small  number  of  foreigners  enabled  to 
outweigh  the  vast  majority  of  native  English.  The  social 
system  of  the  latter  being  utterly  disorganized,  their  speech 
and  their  culture  also  went  down,  while  French  culture 
advanced  and  flourished,  liiis  was,  however,  the  work  of 
ages  only.  In  the  mean  time,  and  before  the  combination 
of  the  two  distinct  forces  could  be  brought  about,  the  oft- 
repeated  lesson  was  once  more  taught,  that  the  strong  arm 
must  bend  before  the  strong  mind.  Triumphant  Rome 
had  sat  at  the  feet  of  enslaved  Greece,  and  the  haughty 
conquerors  of  Spain  had  bowed  low  before  the  poets  of 
Italy,  when  they  held  the  land  in  chains.  So  here,  also,  the 
conqueror  soon  had  to  admit  the  supremacy  of  the  con- 
quered native,  and  quietly,  without  war  or  rebellion,  the 
parts  were  exchanged.  "  In  the  time  of  Richard  I.,"  we 
are  told  by  the  greatest  historian  of  our  day,  "  the  ordinary 
imprecation  of  a  Norman  gentleman  was :  May  I  become 
an  Englishman!  His  ordinary  form  of  indignant  denial 
was :  Do  you  take  me  for  an  Englishman  ?  The  descend- 
ant of  such  a  gentleman,  a  hundred  years  later,  was  proud 
of  the  English  name."  The  fact  was  that,  for  a  time,  there 
were  three  distinct  languages  spoken  in  England:  Latin 
was  the  language  of  the  Church,  French  that  of  the  Court, 
and  Saxon  alone  was  used  by  the  people.  The  latter 
never  forsook  their  precious  birthright ;  they  cherished 
and  guarded  the  tongue  of  their  fathers  like  a  sacred 
inheritance,  and  around  the  hearth  not  a  word  was  heard, 
from  the  beginning,  that  could  remind  them  of  the  hated 
Conqueror.  Nunneries,  also,  were  founded,  like  that  of 
Tavistock,  where  it  was  appointed  that  some  should  be 
taught  the  knowledge  of  the  Saxon  tongue  on  purpose  to 
preserve  it  and  transmit  it  to  posterity  by  communicating 
it,  man  to  man  and  one  generation  to  another.  A  few 
centuries  passed  away  and,  thanks  to  Saxon  freedom  and 


ENGLISH  ELEMENTS.  23 

Saxon  vigor,  the  two  races  sat  side  by  side  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  a  new  language  had  been  formed,  rude  yet 
and  unpolished,  but  already  foreshadowing  its  approaching 
greatness. 

These,  then,  are  the  two  principal  elements  of  our  Eng- 
lish, —  the  Saxon  of  our  oldest  forefathers  and  the  French  of 
our  Norman  conquerors.  But  there  are  other  idioms,  that 
have  largely  contributed  to  swell  the  number  of  our  words 
and  to  fashion  our  grammar  and  syntax.  We  have  already 
spoken  of  the  Celtic,  which  has  given  us  but  few  words, 
most  of  which  are  not  found  in  Anglo-Saxon  and  must, 
therefore,  have  come  in  at  a  later  period.  They  are  now 
met  with  principally  in  the  dialect  of  Lancashire,  where  a 
considerable  population  of  Celts  must  have  remained  after 
the  Saxon  Conquest,  and  it  is  highly  interesting  to  note, 
that  where  these  terms  are  still  in  use,  there  also  the  excita- 
ble and  mercurial  temper  of  the  Celt  still  contrasts  with 
the  stubborn  perseverance  and  sturdy  self-reliance  of  the 
German  descendant.  Sound  and  syntax  were  but  little 
affected  by  the  Celtic.  It  may  have  given  to  certain  Eng- 
lish words  the  exceptional  pronunciation  which  we  notice 
in  tough  and  enough,  and  in  the  construction  of  our  sen- 
tences it  has  probably  bequeathed  to  us  the  power  to  omit 
the  relative  pronoun,  as  when  we  say.  The  man  I  saw, 
instead  of,  The  man  whom  I  saw,  together  with  the  great 
repugnance  to  use  reflexive  pronouns,  which  characterizes 
modern  English. 

The  Danes,  who  for  a  time  were  masters  of  England  and 
seated  their  kings  upon  the  throne,  were  less  civilized  than 
their  subjects,  and  adopted  the  language  of  the  superior 
race,  so  that  but  few  English  words  can  really  be  traced  to 
Danish  influence.  The  relation  between  the  two  idioms 
was  very  different  from  what  might  have  been  expected 
under  the  circumstances.  It  showed,  a  second  time  in  the 
history  of  our  language,  that  the  pen  ever  triumphs  over 
the  sword,  the  olive  over  the  laurel,  mental  culture  over 


24  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

barbarous  violence,  the  written  language  over  the  spoken. 
The  Danes  had  neither  literature  nor  grammar.  Hence 
their  influence  on  English  was  only  repressive  and  destruc- 
tive. They  abhorred  difficult  and  subtle  inflexions,  and 
thus  deprived  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  much  lumber  of  that 
kind.  So  far  from  fashioning  or  affecting  in  any  way  the 
vernacular  of  their  subjects,  their  own  language  at  home 
declined  from  the  day  on  which  it  came  into  contact  with 
Saxon.  Their  court  was  often  in  England,  their  army  lay 
there  many  years,  and  all  laws  and  public  acts,  relating  to 
England,  were  published  in  Anglo-Saxon.  Thus  even  their 
chieftains  and  nobles  could  introduce  but  a  single  title  into 
the  conquered  land,  that  of  Earl,  from  the  Danish  Yarl,  but 
that  nobleman's  wife  resumed  at  once  the  Norman  name  of 
Countess.  How  little  the  Saxon  nobles  were  willing  to  sub- 
mit to  such  a  yoke,  may  be  seen  from  the  spirited  resolu- 
tions they  passed  immediately  after  the  death  of  Hardica- 
nute.  No  Dane,  they  agreed,  should  from  that  time  be 
permitted  to  reign  over  England ;  all  Danish  soldiers  in 
any  city,  town,  or  castle  should  be  either  killed  or  banished 
from  the  kingdom,  and  whoever  should  from  that  time  dare 
to  propose  to  the  people  a  Danish  sovereign  should  be 
deemed  a  traitor  to  government  and  an  enemy  to  his  coun- 
try. A  people  that  gave  vent  to  such  sentiments  was  not 
likely  to  adopt  many  words  or  to  borrow  many  expressions 
from  a  hated  master  whom  they  no  longer  obeyed.  A  few, 
like  forse  in  the  sense  of  waterfall,  and  gill  for  a  rocky 
ravine,  have  never  been  used  in  classical  English  until 
Wordsworth  made  them  familiar  words. 

By  the  side  of  the  unimportant  contributions  thus  made 
by  Celt  and  Northman,  the  additions  we  owe  to  Latin  as- 
sume gigantic  proportions  and  deserve  separate  treatment 
Other  idioms  also  came  in  to  swell  the  mighty  host  In 
the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth  Italian  phrases  abounded,  and 
old  Fortunatus  tells  us  that  in  1624  — 


ENGLISH  ELEMENTS.  25 

"Fantastic  compliment  stalks  up  and  down 
Trick'd  in  outlandish  feathers,  all  his  words, 
His  looks,  his  oaths,  are  all  ridiculous, 
All  apish,  childish,  and  lialianatey 

Under  James  and  Charles  it  was  the  Spanish  which  framed 
the  style  of  courtesy,  and  left  us  many  allusions  to  grave 
dons  and  mighty  grandees.  In  the  days  of  Charles  II. 
again,  the  nation  and  the  language  became  equally  French- 
ified, and  our  own  generation,  led  by  great  masters  of  way- 
ward taste,  borrows  more  largely  from  German  than  pru- 
dence and  patriotism  would  seem  to  warrant. 

On  the  whole  it  may  be  said,  however,  that  every  foreign 
element  now  has  its  own  domain  in  English.  Latin  still 
furnishes  us  with  theological  technicalities,  Greek  with  the 
majority  of  metaphysical  terms ;  German  is  the  language 
of  mineralogy  and  of  parts  of  geology  ;  the  fashions  claim 
naturally  French  as  their  vehicle,  and,  oddly  enough,  share 
it  with  the  science  of  war,  whilst  mathematics  use  Latin, 
Greek,  French,  and  Arabic  in  fraternal  union. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

LATIN   IN   ENGLISH. 

Latin  seems  to  have  been  determined,  from  early  times, 
to  obtain  a  footing  in  England  and  to  lord  it  over  her  sons, 
as  it  had  done  triumphantly  in  France  and  in  Spain,  in 
Italy  and  in  many  an  Eastern  province.  It  never  found  a 
hearty  welcome  there,  but  no  sooner  was  one  attack  suc- 
cessfully resisted  by  the  sturdy  islanders,  than  it  returned 
to  the  charge.  It  came  under  all  forms  and  at  all  times, 
now  armed  with  the  sword  and  escorted  by  the  invincible 
legions  of  ancient  Rome ;  then,  bearing  the  cross  aloft  and 
swelling  in  anthem  and  hymn.  A  few  generations  later  it 
followed  the  Conqueror  in  his  victorious  march,  and  for  a 
time  ruled  supreme ;  later  it  reappeared  in  the  train  of 
fashion  or  claimed  admittance  under  the  guise  of  deep 
learning.  Our  English  entered  not  into  bitter  warfare,  nor 
did  it  churlishly  close  its  door  against  the  often  unwelcome 
intruder.  It  did  not  submit,  however,  but  quietly  resumed 
its  supremacy,  admitting  so  much  of  the  foreign  element  as 
was  good  and  useful  for  its  own  great  national  purposes, 
and  rejecting  the  surplus  by  the  simple  force  of  good  taste 
and  common  sense.  Thus  it  maintained  its  independence, 
gained  largely  in  words  and  in  terms,  but  never  troubled 
itself  to  translate,  —  as  the  Germans  do  now  with  pedantic 
purism,  by  which  after  all  but  half  of  the  sense  is  caught,  — 
but  rather  preferred  most  sensibly  to  admit  the  foreigners 
and  to  naturalize  them  in  accordance  with  their  own  native 
sound  and  use. 

The  first  time  that  Latin  touched  the  shores  of  the  Brit- 


LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  27 

ish  isles,  it  entered  probably  under  the  auspices  of  the  great 
Caesar,  when  he  appeared  there  for  a  month  in  the  year  55. 
In  the  following  year  he  landed  once  more  and  remained  a 
longer  time,  forcing  the  British  leaders  to  surrender,  and 
carrying  off  several  native  princes  as  hostages.  Still, 
throughout  the  Augustan  era,  Roman  civilization  and  re- 
finement were  unknown  to  Britain,  and  no  trace  of  their 
conquest  remains  visible.  It  was  Claudius  who  first  could 
glory  in  conquering  the  Britons,  for  "  Julius  Caesar  did  no 
more  than  show  them  to  the  Romans."  Even  when  this 
Emperor  had  received  the  honor  of  a  triumph  and  the  title 
of  Britannicus  for  his  success  in  the  distant  islands,  the 
arms  of  the  Romans  had  not  yet  penetrated  beyond  the 
southern  parts  of  Britain.  The  subjugation  was  not  com- 
pleted until  the  age  of  Tacitus,  when  his  distinguished 
father-in-law,  Agricola,  after  having  overrun  the  whole 
island  far  beyond  the  Firth,  and  after  having  sailed  round 
it  to  reduce  the  Orkneys  also,  conquered  it  finally.  Then 
followed  the  days  of  Roman  rule,  during  which  the  country 
became  studded  with  flourishing  cities  and  with  numerous 
towns  and  villas,  in  all  of  which  Latin  was  spoken  and  Ro- 
man arts  and  civilization  were  known.  Theatres  and  am- 
phitheatres abounded,  public  baths  were  provided,  and  the 
gods  of  Rome  as  well  as  foreign  deities  had  their  temples 
in  larger  cities.  The  reaction,  it  is  well  known,  came 
sooner  than  could  well  have  been  expected.  The  great 
empire  was  shaken  in  its  foundations ;  fierce,  mysterious 
barbarians  came  from  the  far  East  to  claim  the  sceptre  of 
the  world  for  their  race,  province  after  province  was  lost, 
and  the  old,  tried  legions  of  Rome  had  to  return  to  pro- 
tect Italy  itself  from  the  invader.  Thus  Hadrian  was 
already  compelled  to  abandon  all  the  land  between  the 
Solway  and  the  Clyde,  and  between  the  Tyne  and  the  Frith 
of  Forth,  and  to  build  the  great  wall  against  the  Picts.  In 
418,  the  Anglo-Saxon  chronicle  tells  us,  there  was  not  a 
Roman  left  on  the  island. 


28  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Whatever  may  have  been,  in  those  days,  the  success  of 
Latin,  on  the  Continent,  it  was  comparatively  powerless  in 
England.  There  it  drove  out  the  Celtic,  resisted  success- 
fully its  great  rival  the  German,  and  lived  anew  in  French 
and  Spanish.  In  England  it  never  superseded  the  old 
Gaelic,  and,  in  its  turn,  readily  succumbed  to  the  Saxon. 
Macaulay  explains  this  striking  difference  by  the  opinion, 
that  "  it  is  not  probable  that  the  islanders  were  at  any  time 
generally  familiar  with  the  language  of  their  Italian  rulers." 
But  there  were  other  reasons,  besides,  which  aided  the 
Celtic  in  holding  its  own.  The  Eomans  lived  almost  ex- 
clusively in  fortified  towns,  many  of  which  bear,  to  this 
day,  their  Latin  name;  whilst  in  the  country  Celtic  re- 
mained prevalent,  and,  after  the  withdrawal  of  the  foreign 
legions,  resumed  its  supremacy.  Then  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten, that  whilst  might  and  valor  were  on  the  side  of  the 
Romans,  civilization  and  intelligence  were  with  the  Britons. 
The  Irish  Celts  were  not  only  superior  to  all  others  of  their 
race,  but  actually  sent  out  teachers  and  missionaries  to  the 
adjoining  countries.  In  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century 
Christianity  was  already  prevailing  among  them  all,  and 
had  brought  with  it  classic  refinement  and  culture.  Little 
Latin,  therefore,  in  our  English,  can  be  traced  directly  to 
this  first  invasion  ;  the  essential  and  genuine  contributions 
to  our  words  are  limited  to  three :  colonia,  which  survives 
mainly  in  local  names ;  castrum,  in  castle  and  Chester ;  and 
stratum,  in  those  compounds  in  which  it  is  not  more  clearly 
traceable  to  a  similar  word  of  the  Anglo-Saxon. 

Far  more  threatening  in  its  aspect,  and  infinitely  more 
permanent  in  its  influence,  was  the  introduction  of  Latin 
by  means  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  The  primitive  British 
Church  was  a  branch  of  the  great  Celtic  Church  which, 
planted  as  early  as  the  first  ages  in  the  South  of  Gaul,  ex- 
tended rapidly  into  Ireland,  and  from  there  into  Wales,  the 
Western  Isles,  and  many  parts  of  Southern  Britain.  The 
zeal  and  the  piety  of  this  Celtic  Church  were  so  great  as 


LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  29 

to  earn  for  Ireland  the  title  of  Insula  Sanctorum,  but  theii' 
learning  was  by  no  means  in  proportion,  and  hence  priests 
and  officials  generally  came  from  the  older  churches  in 
Southern  ICurope.  Thus  already,  in  the  sixth  century,  we 
find  Roman  ecclesiastics  formally  installed  in  England ;  and 
in  the  church  and  the  convent,  among  priests  and  among 
laymen,  Latin  had  become  the  only  language  in  which 
matters  of  faith  were  transacted.  Their  prayers,  their 
chants,  and  their  books,  were,  for  a  time,  all  in  Latin.  Un- 
fortunately, the  early  Anglo-Saxon  Church  did  not  use  a 
Latin  taken  from  the  classic  authors  of  Rome,  but  they 
sought  their  words  in  the  Origines  of  Isidore,  and  in  other 
writings  of  the  same  class.  They  affected,  moreover,  es- 
pecially barbarous  compounds  from  the  Greek,  like  elee- 
mosynary, which  still  survives  with  its  seven  syllables, 
though  the  noun  has  shrunk,  through  the  Anglo-Saxon 
form  almesse,  into  the  monosyllabic  alms.  Nor  was  this  un- 
desirable form  of  Latin  easily  gotten  rid  of;  we  feel  its 
sad,  demoralizing  effects,  even  at  this  day.  For  through 
the  overwhelming  influence  of  the  Church,  and  its  long, 
undisputed  sway,  the  whole  system  of  theology  in  England 
had  become,  as  it  were,  incorporated  in  Latin,  and  this  to 
such  an  extent  that  even  the  English  Reformers  could 
communicate  by  no  other  means  than  Latin  with  the  foun- 
tain-head at  Rome,  or  with  their  teachers  and  brethren  on 
the  Continent.  The  vast  mass  of  monkish  literature,  the 
countless  religious  essays,  the  fabulous  chronicles  of  those 
days,  and  the  few  interspersed  satires  that  have  been 
handed  down  to  us,  all  are  written  in  the  barbarous  Latin 
found  in  the  Fathers  of  the  Church.  This  was  the  more 
pernicious,  as  a  large  number  of  these  so-called  Latin 
terms  had  themselves  not  long  ago  been  derived  from  the 
Greek,  because  of  the  great  influence  of  the  Greek 
Church  in  the  early  days  of  Christianity.  Some  of  these 
are  still  in  existence,  and  used  in  connection  with  the 
Church,  as  — 


80 


STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 


Greek. 
itA^ptKos, 

Xatm. 
clericus, 

Anglo- Saxon 
cleric, 

English. 
clerk. 

v^aAAfa),. 
eXe7j/oio<rv»'7j, 

psalm, 
almesse. 

psalm, 
alms. 

ill 

diabolus, 

cyrice, 
deofol, 

church. 

presbyter. 

devil. 

HOVOKOI    ( ? ), 

episcopus, 
monacus, 

bisceop, 
munuc, 

bishop, 
monk. 

Many  of  these  terms  can  be  traced  back  to  their  early 
introduction  into  English,  none  perhaps  farther  than  the 
last  mentioned.  It  occurs  in  the  unique  specimen  of  a 
song  composed  by  Canute  the  king,  as  he  was  one  day 
rowing  on  the  Nen,  when  the  holy  music  from  the  minster 
of  Ely  came  floating  on  the  air  and  over  the  water.  It  so 
touched  the  hearts  of  the  people,  that  the  historian,  to 
whose  care  we  owe  the  precious  fragment,  tells  us  that  it 
was  "  until  to-day  publicly  sung  in  choirs  and  repeated  in 
proverbs."     It  runs  thus  :  — 

"  Merie  sungen  the  muneches  binnen  Ely 
Tha  Cnut  ching  raw  (rowed)  there  by: 
Roweth,  cnihtes,  noer  the  lant  (land) 
And  here  (hear)  we  thes  muneches  saeng." 

As  will  be  seen  from  these  examples,  most  of  the  Latin 
words  so  formed  and  borrowed,  were  made  anew  for  Church 
purposes,  and  are,  therefore,  not  to  be  found  in  classic 
Latin.  They  are  almost  all  nouns ;  we  find  only  a  few 
adjectives  in  English  that  can  be  traced  back  to  this  earli- 
est source  of  Latin,  and  the  still  rarer  verbs  are  generally 
of  doubtful  origin.  Among  those  that  were  not  derived 
from  the  Greek  we  find  again  some  that  really  existed  in 
the  works  of  classic  authors,  and  others  which  belonged 
exclusively  to  the  barbarous  forms  of  later,  corrupt  Latin, 
Some  of  the  latter,  almost  offensive  in  their  disguise,  are 
still  to  be  found  in  the  Parson's  Tale  of  Chaucer  as  ac- 
cidia^  contimax,  savacioun,  and  penitentta;  others  appear 
slightly  transformed,  as  celestial,  disordindte,  elacioun,  and 


LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  31 

pertinacie.  A  much  larger  number  have  adopted  better 
forms,  and  are  now  fully  naturalized.  Such  words,  derived 
directly  from  Latin,  without  having  first  passed  through  the 
French,  are,  e.  g. : 

jmndus,  pound.  prcepositus,  provost. 

moneta,  mynet,  mint.i  missa  (est  congregatio),  mass. 

ancora,  anchor.  corona,  crown. 

petroselinum,  parsley.  Jicus,  fig  (tree). 

febrifuga,  feverfew.  piper,  pepper. 

pumex,  pumice  (Btone).  versus,  verse. 

paUium,  pall.  prima,   prime  (service  in  the 

pro&dicare,  preach.  morning). 

candela,  candle.  y  regula,  rule. 

To  the  same  class  belong  also  our  minster,  porch,  cloister, 
saint,  parish,  the  names  of  the  elephant,  the  lion,  and  the 
camel,  and  of  all  our  months. 

When  we  consider  the  paramount  power  of  the  church 
in  those  days,  the  strong  hold  it  had  not  only  on  the  con- 
sciences but  also  on  the  minds  of  men,  as  the  sole  guardian 
of  all  learning  and  useful  knowledge,  and  the  wisdom  with 
which  such  means  were  used  for  the  purpose  of  controlling 
the  people,  the  small  number  of  Latin  words  which  the 
English  owes  to  this  source  appears  quite  surprising.  We 
must  not  forget,  however,  that  religion  was  with  the  Saxon 
race  ever  the  bright  reflection  of  patriotism.  They  were 
obedient  children  of  the  church,  but  they  insisted,  early 
and  perseveringly,  upon  the  right  of  worshiping  God  after 
their  own  manner,  in  their  own  tongue.  Hence  the  sturdy 
independence  of  the  nation  even  in  matters  of  faith,  and 
the  early  dissensions  within  the  English  church.  Many  of 
the  most  famous  missionaries  the  world  knows  were  ex- 
pelled priests  of  England,  men  branded  by  the  followers  of 
Augustine,  who  went  as  true  heralds  of  salvation  abroad, 
and  rooted  Christianity  in  most  parts  of  Europe.     Hence 

1  The  first  silver  money  was  coined  at  Rome  482  A.  U.  G. ;  the  mint  was 
in  the  Temple  of  Juno  Moneta,  and  this  circumstance  occasioned  the  origin 
of  our  word  "money."  —  Hooke's  Rome. 


32  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

also  the  preference  the  people  early  showed  for  priests  of 
their  own  race,  who  knew  no  other  law  and  no  other 
tongue  but  that  of  their  Saxon  fathers.  Roman  law  was 
almost  unknown  among  the  Saxons.  Canon  law,  based 
upon  the  former,  took  root  but  slowly,  and  thus  many  of 
the  most  important. features  of  the  Church  of  Rome  were 
adopted  but  late  in  the  distant  island.  Even  spiritual 
weapons  lose  some  of  their  force  so  far  from  the  authority 
that  wields  them,  and  the  wise  moderation  of  Rome  no 
doubt  allowed  her  unruly  sons  much  time  to  fall  into  the 
ranks.  As  a  proof  of  this  it  may  be  mentioned  that  celi- 
bacy was  unknown  in  England  until  a  late  period,  and  that 
during  the  whole  time  that  Anglo-Saxons  ruled  over  the 
island,  the  sacrament  was  administered  in  both  forms.  But 
what  prevented  Latin  most  from  influencing  our  English  more 
largely  then,  was  the  fact  that  for  a  long  time  the  tongue  of 
the  church  was  the  mother  tongue.  England  produced  the 
first  Bible  version  in  the  vernacular ;  countless  homilies  and 
prayers,  hymns  and  psalms  were  written  in  English,  and 
the  greater  part  of  the  ritual  even  was  Saxon.  Thus  it  is 
that  the  marriage  service  of  the  modern  Episcopal  church, 
with  its  hearty  sound,  and  simple  sterling  substance,  is 
almost  identical  yet  with  that  used  by  the  early  church. 
Thus  also  was  laid  in  darkest  days  the  foundation  for  the 
sturdy  Protestantism  of  the  English  people,  and  their 
independence  of  Rome ;  so  that,  when  in  later  days  the 
Reformers  sought  for  weapons  abroad  and  at  home  to  fight 
the  great  battle  of  Liberty,  they  found  in  these  Saxon 
writings  almost  all  the  theological  views  for  which  they 
contended,  proving  among  other  things  that  the  Scriptures 
had,  from  the  beginning,  been  read  in  the  vulgar,  and  not 
in  the  Latin  tongue,  by  a  truly  catholic  people. 

Nor  ought  it  to  be  overlooked,  that  the  Anglo-Saxons 
had  terms  for  many  of  the  doctrines  and  rites  of  Chris- 
tianity long  before  the  corresponding  words  of  Latin  origin, 
—  a  fact  which  is  justly  referred  to  as  a  proof  of  the  early 


LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  \  33 

independence  of  the  British  church.  Thus  they  used  full- 
ian,  from  which  our  fuller,  to  wash  white  or  to  purify,  for 
"  baptize  ;  "  aerist^  rising,  for  resurrection ;  leorning-cniht,  a 
learning  youth,  for  disciple ;  and  JisjoeZ,  a  by-tale,  the  German 
Beispiel,  for  parable,  —  words  which  in  simplicity  and  clear- 
ness far  surpass  the  modern  terms  of  foreign  origin.  Even 
as  late  as  Wickliffe's  Bible  version,  we  find  unworschip  for 
dishonor,  provynge  for  experience,  Jcyndli  for  natural,  folhis 
for  nations,  forthenhynge  for  repentance,  agenstendan  for 
resist,  and  agenrysing  for  resurrection,  —  all  of  them^ words 
which  would  answer  their  purpose  almost  as  well  in  our 
day,  and  have  the  great  advantage  of  being  intelligible  not 
to  the  educated  only  but  to  the  masses  alike. 

It  is  to  these  characteristic  features  of  our  Saxon  fore- 
fathers that  we  must  mainly  ascribe  the  comparative  free- 
dom of  their  and  our  language  from  a  larger  admixture  of 
Latin.  As  neither  clergy  nor  royalty  disdained  in  England 
to  use  the  vernacular,  their  example  was  soon  followed 
by  influential  persons.  Thus  Anglo-Saxon  was  developed 
and  protected  against  the  baneful  influence  of  dead  lan- 
guages, and  grew  rich  even  in  prose-writings,  at  a  time 
when  in  kindred  Germany  the  mother  tongue  was  de- 
spised or  little  esteemed,  and  when  everywhere  else  Latin 
was  considered  the  only  language  fit  for  subjects  of  graver 
import  or  of  sacred  nature. 

A  third  time  Latin  came  and  claimed  admittance  into 
the  English  language,  and  now  as  at  first  by  the  brutal  right 
of  the  stronger,  though  under  a  new  disguise.  The  Norman- 
French,  when  they  won  the  day  at  Hastings  and  awoke  on 
the  next  morning  masters  of  all  England,  brought  with 
them  their  French,  a  bastard  child  of  ancient  Latin. 
They  prescribed  its  use  by  stringent  laws,  they  crammed 
it  down  the  throats  of  their  subjects  with  the  point  of  the 
sword.  For  a  time  it  seemed  triumphant.  The  king  and 
his  followers,  the  courts  of  justice,  the  haughty  barons  and 
the  insolent  soldiers  —  they  all  spoke  Latin-French,  and 
3 


34  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

would  listen  to  no  other  tongue.  The  Saxons  learned  it 
from  a  sense  of  duty,  from  ambition,  oflen  even  from 
hatred.  Vanity  also  aided  the  new  language,  and  this 
motive  extended  even  to  the  lowliest  peasants,  of  whom 
an  ancient  writer  tells  us  that  even  the  boors,  in  order 
to  appear  more  respectable,  used  French  terms  by  pref- 
erence.* 

With  all  the  prestige  of  a  conqueror's  language,  with  all 
the  immense  pressure  it  must  have  exerted  on  the  subju- 
gated and  ill-treated  people,  the  Norman-French  did  not 
long  maintain  its  power,  nor  even  its  independence.  Once 
more  the  master  had  to  learn  from  the  servant,  and  ere 
three  centuries  had  passed  the  relative  position  of  French 
and  of  Saxon  was  reversed  and  the  latter  once  more  tri- 
umphant. Soon  after  the  great  plague  in  1348,  the  fate  of 
Norman-French  as  a  national  tongue  was  decided ;  from 
that  year  even  the  usual  translations  of  Saxon  into  French 
were  omitted  by  schoolmasters,  and  ere  long  a  law  for- 
bade the  granting  of  ecclesiastic  preferments  to  any  but 
English-born  subjects.  When  Gower  wrote  his  poor  French 
verses,  he  had  at  least  the  grace  to  ask  pardon. 

"  Si  jeo  n'ai  de  fran^ois  la  faconde 
Pardonetz  moi  que  jeo  de  ceo  forsvoie 
Jeo  suis  Englois ;  si  quiere  par  tele  voie 
Estre  excuse." 

It  is  true  that  with  the  victories  and  conquests  of  Ed- 
ward III.  in  France,  the  French  element  once  more  gained 
strength,  and  deriving  fresh  force  from  the  fountaiin-head 
threatened,  for  a  time,  to  become  all  powerful  in  England. 
It  was  then  that  French  words  were  brought  over  by  whole 
cargoes  —  Integra  verhorum  plaustra  —  and  put  up  to  pub- 
lic approbation  by  the  great  writers  of  the  time.  Courtly 
Chaucer  showed  the  influence  of  this  wholesale  importation 
by  his  preponderance  of  French  words,  though  he  has,  per- 

1  "  Rarales  homines  —  ut  per  hoc  spectabiliores  videantur,  francigenari 
eatagunt  omni  visa."  —  Higden,  Polychron,  p.  210,  Ed.  Gale. 


LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  35 

haps  unconsciously,  his  sly  hit  at  those  who  spoke  French 
after  home  fashion,  in  the  lines :  — 

*'  Ther  was  also  a  nonne,  a  Prioresse, 
That  of  hire  smiling  was  full  simple  and  coy  .... 
And  frenche  she  spake  ful  fayre  and  fetisly, 
After  the  scole  of  Stratford  atte  Bowe, 
For  frenche  of  Paris  was  to  here  unknown." 

Canterbury  Tales,  118. 

This  new  infusion  came,  however,  too  late  to  affect  the 
language  in  its  essential  features.  The  many  new  verbs 
and  nouns  and  adjectives  made  by  the  father  of  English 
poetry  did  not,  by  any  means,  become  permanently  parts  of 
the  language :  some  dwindled  away  and  have  long  since 
disappeared  forever,  whilst  others  took  hold  of  the  nation's 
mind  and  preluded 

"  Those  melodious  streams  that  fill 
The  spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth 
With  sounds  that  echo  still." 

It  is,  therefore,  not  difficult  to  understand  why  this  in- 
vasion should  have  been  comparatively  harmless,  as  far 
as  pure,  classic  Latin  was  concerned.  The  admixture  of 
modified  Latin,  in  its  Norman-French  form,  was  of  course 
important  alike  in  quantity  and  general  influence.  Thus 
Sir  John  Mandeville,  who  to  be  sure  "  put  his  boke  out 
of  Latyn  into  Frensche  and  translated  it  agen  out  of 
Frensche  into  Englysche,"  uses,  as  Mr.  Marsh  informs  us, 
a  larger  proportion  of  Latin  and  French  words  than  any 
other  poet  of  his  country.  From  the  careful  and  accurate 
investigation  of  that  eminent  American  scholar  it  appears 
that  a  single  work  of  this  writer  exhibits  an  addition  of 
about  fourteen  hundred  words  of  Latin  origin  to  the  vocab- 
ulary of  the  previous  century  !  The  fact  was,  that  the 
Anglo-Saxon  had  lost  its  flexibility,  and  with  it  the  power 
to  adapt  itself  to  the  new  regime,  and  thus  the  common 
necessities  of  the  people  called  for  the  introduction  of  so 
many  Latin  or  Romance  words  into  English.  The  blame  for 
this  so-called  corruption  of  the  vernacular  has  often  been 


86  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

laid  upon  the  poets  of  that  age,  but  without  justice.  They 
only  used  the  language  as  they  found  it. 

All  the  more  remarkable  is  it,  that  no  Romance  inflection 
penetrated  into  English.  Except  in  a  few  words,  it  is  even 
difficult  in  the  extreme,  from  the  form  alone,  to  tell  which 
words  came  directly  from  the  Latin  and  which  through 
the  French.  When  Anglo-Saxon  writers  use  mint  from 
moneta,  and  Norman  authors  have  money  from  the  same 
source,  the  decision  is  easy  enough.  But  in  the  majority 
of  cases  the  history  of  the  word  cannot  be  so  certainly 
traced,  and  then  we  must  content  ourselves  with  the  mere 
fact,  that  the  same  word  exists  twice  in  English,  once  in  its 
original  Latin  form,  and  again  in  a  French-Latin  form. 
Instances  of  such  twin-forms  are  :  — 

factum,  fact  and  feat.  secwrus^  secure  and  sure. 

f actio,  faction  and  fashion.  quietus,  quiet  and  coy. 

tractus,  tract  and  treat.  zelosus,  zealous  and  jealous. 

balsamum,  balm  and  balsam.  geniilis,  genteel  and  gentle. 

persona,  person  and  parson.  legalis,  loyal  and  legal. 

captivus,  captive  and  caitiff. 

Pure  Latin  was  still  spoken  and  written,  but  by  so  limited 
a  class  of  men,  that  its  influence  on  the  national  tongue 
was  neither  important  at  the  time  nor  permanent  in  its 
effects.  This  want  of  direct  power  was  partly  due  to  the 
gradual  but  decided  deterioration  of  Latin  itself.  From 
the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the  decline  and 
fall  of  elegant  literature  is  clearly  perceptible,  and  with  it 
the  rapid  disappearance  of  classic  learning.  The  habit  of 
speaking  Latin  cqrrectly  and  elegantly,  so  common  before 
among  the  scholars  of  all  lands,  was  generally  lost,  and 
even  at  the  universities  the  classic  tongue  degenerated  into 
a  mere  jargon,  without  grammar  or  syntax.  It  was  the 
era  when  a  new  learning  seized  hold  of  the  minds  of  men, 
and  when  all  studious  aspirants  for  fame  bowed  to  the  ab- 
solute sway  of  scholastic  logic  and  metaphysics.  The  same 
enthusiasm  prevailed  throughout  Christendom;  all  the  in- 
tellects of  Europe  were  in  a  ferment.     Oxford  counted,  a 


LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  37 

hundred  years  later,  thirty  thousand  students  in  her  Uni- 
versity, and  the  number  was  probably  even  greater  at  Paris. 
Education  and  knowledge  were  diffused  widely  and  liber- 
ally, but  classic  learning  disappeared  for  a  time,  and  with 
it  the  power  and  the  happy  influence  of  Latin. 

A  more  distinct,  and,  to  some  extent,  brilliantly  success- 
ful attempt  to  introduce  Latin,  was  made  in  the  days  of 
Queen  Elizabeth.  From  the  time  of  her  accession  to  the 
Restoration,  the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin  was  once  more 
quite  general  in  England,  and  the  majority  of  authors  were 
thorough  scholars  in  both  languages ;  very  naturally,  there- 
fore, a  large  number  of  Latin  words  then  found  their  way 
into  English.  "  The  unlearned  or  foolish  fantastical,"  says 
Thomas  Wilson,  in  his  "  System  of  Rhetoric  and  Logic," 
published  1533,  "that  smells  but  of  learning  (such  fellows 
as  have  seen  learned  men  in  their  days),  will  so  Latin  their 
tongues  that  the  simple  cannot  but  wonder  at  their  talk, 
and  think  surely  they  speak  by  some  revelation."  "  If 
elegancy  still  proceedeth,"  says  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  him- 
self one  of  the  greatest  speechmongers,  "  and  English  pens 
maintain  that  stream  we  have  of  late  observed  to  flow  from 
many,  we  shall,  within  a  few  years,  be  fain  to  learn  Latin 
to  understand  English,  and  a  work  will  prove  of  equal 
facility  in  either." 

This  was  the  age  of  adventure  and  experiment,  not  only 
on  the  high  seas  in  search  of  new  continents,  or  in  the 
realms  of  science  and  faith,  to  discover  new  doctrines  and 
creeds,  but  in  language  also.  The  whole  world  of  antiquity, 
with  its  riches  in  words  as  well  as  in  wisdom,  was  suddenly 
thrown  open  to  all ;  no  guide  pointed  out  the  way,  no  bar- 
riers limited  the  range  of  thought  or  taste,  and  the  use  to 
be  made  of  these  large  treasures  was  left  to  the  inexpe- 
rienced direction  of  perplexed  writers.  A  perfect  flood  of 
new  words,  mostly  but  half  understood,  inundated  England, 
and  formed  with  the  good  old  Saxon  words  a  jargon  which, 
unhappily  for  the  taste  of  those  days,  was  hailed  as  a  model 


38  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

of  melody  and  refinement.  Many  writers  of  that  time 
considered  it  a  matter  of  national  pride  to  imitate  the 
scholars  of  the  continent,  who  knew  no  other  language 
but  Latin  for  science  and  literature,  and  English  was  once 
more  threatened  with  entire  destruction. 

The  number  of  Inkhorn-Terms,  as  the  words  they  man- 
ufactured were  then  called,  was  as  great  as  their  form  was 
uncouth.  We  may  well  be  grateful,  that  good  taste  and 
good  sense  have  relieved  us  from  words  like  the  following, 
which  were  then  in  use  among  contemporary  writers :  — 
Subsanuation,  ludibundness,  septenfluous,  disincorporation, 
discerptibility,  septentrionality,  incomprehensibility,  and  su- 
pervacuousness.  The  contrast  of  these  magnificent  and 
grandiloquent  terms  with  the  "  native  woodnotes  wild  "  of 
simple  Saxon,  is  generally  rather  a  melancholy  one,  but  it  be- 
comes at  times  quite  ludicrous.  Thus  Jeremy  Taylor,  speak- 
ing of  the  bruising  of  the  serpent's  head,  calls  it,  "  the  con- 
trition of  the  serpent,"  and,  as  Bishop  Heber  notices,  after 
having  substituted  excellent  for  surpassing,  speaks  consist- 
ently but  absurdly,  of  a  sinner  as  feeling  "  excellent  pain." 

This  practice  of  using  Latin,  which  had  been  brought 
in  mainly  since  the  reign  of  James  L,  was  subsequently 
carried  to  still  greater  excess  by  the  Puritans.  It  was  this 
abuse  which  the  keen  satire  of  Butler  ridiculed  in  the  lines : 

"  For  when  he  pleased  to  show 't,  his  speech 
In  loftiness  of  sound  was  rich,  • 

A  Babylonish  dialect, 
Which  learned  pedants  much  affect. 
'T  was  English  cut  on  Greek  and  Latin, 
Like  fustian  heretofore  on  satin." 

Hudibras,  Pt.  I.  c.  i.  91. 

The  words  that  the  wise  Bacon  and  the  brave  Raleigh 
spoke,  are  almost  the  only  ones  of  those  days  that  were 
free  from  such  barbarism.  Nobly  and  manfully  struggling 
against  the  current,  and  despising  an  absurd  fashion,  they 
abstained  from  the  formation  of  such  Latinized  words. 
But  the  most  brilliant  example  of  success  in  pure  English, 


LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  39 

under  such  trying  circumstances,  is  found  in  the  writings 
of  the  bosom  friend  of  Erasmus,  Sir  Thomas  More,  of 
whom  Ben  Jonson  says  that,  "  his  works  were  considered 
as  models  of  pure  and  elegant  style ; "  whilst  Hallam  calls 
them,  "  the  first  example  of  good  English  language ;  pure 
and  conspicuous,  well  chosen,  without  vulgarism  or  pedan- 
try."    Many  of  his  sentences,  we  are  confident,  would  even 
now  be  considered  models  of  chaste  and  elegant  English. 
Other  writers,  however,  resisted  the  current  less  success- 
fully, and  even  the  warmest  admirers  of  Milton  can  hardly 
venture  to  excuse  his  extravagant  fondness  for  Latin,  which 
could  lead  him  to  write  lines  like  these :  — 
*'  With  keen  dispatch 
Of  real  hunger  and  concoctive  heate 
To  transubstantiate ;  what  redounds  transpires 
Through  spirits  with  ease." 

Paradise  Lost,  v.  436. 

We  must  bear  in  mind,  however,  that  pedantry  was  all- 
popular  for  the  time,  and  that  if  divines  and  philosophers 
could  destroy  a  language  it  would  certainly  have  been  done 
then.  The  good  sense  of  the  people,  and  a  returning  con- 
sciousness of  the  superiority  of  the  mother  tongue,  caused 
them,  fortunately,  soon  to  drop  words  which  could  already 
be  found  in  English  as  brief  and  as  forcible.  Such  were, 
for  instance,  Jeremy  Taylor's  coinings  of  funest  (sad), 
respersed  (scattered),  deturpated  (deformed),  clancularly 
(stealthily),  correption  (rebuke),  intenerate  (soften),  whilst 
others  which  were  used  incorrectly,  like  the  same  writer's 
immured  for  encompassed,  extant  for  standing  out,  inso- 
lent for  unusual,  contrition  for  bruising,  and  irritation  for 
making  void,  were  never  allowed  to  pass  current. 

Besides,  a  large  number  of  these  words  were  torn  up 
from  the  Latin  and  transplanted  into  English,  like  flowers 
and  branches  into  children's  gardens,  without  ever  taking 
root,  and  thus  they  soon  disappeared.  Those  only  that 
were  really  useful  remained,  and  were  duly  naturalized  in 
the  course  of  time,  and  the  happy  effect  of  the  incorporu 


40  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

tion  of  such  terms  into  our  English  will  be  easily  under- 
stood. 

The  Anglo-Saxon,  mainly  given  to  sensible  objects,  has 
from  the  beginning  been  sadly  wanting  in  abstract  terms. 
Philosophy  and  science  were  comparatively  unknown  to  its 
exchequer  of  words,  and  the  arts  appeared  almost  exclu- 
sively under  foreign  names.  These  wants  were  now  sup* 
plied,  and  this  accession  was  all  the  more  welcome  as  there 
was  a  full  tide  of  knowledge  rolling  in  upon  the  reawaken- 
ing minds  of  those  days,  which  soon  overflowed  the  narrow 
channel  of  the  language.  But  it  was  also  then  for  the  first 
time  perceived  what  irreparable  injury  had  been  done  to 
the  mother  tongue  by  its  temporary  subjugation.  It  had 
lost,  whilst  under  the  baneful  control  of  the  Norman- 
French,  that  plastic  character,  that  power  of "  adapting 
itself  to  new  ideas  and  forming  new  words,  which  it  origi- 
nally possessed  in  common  with  all  Teutonic  languages,  and 
which  the  German  has  successfully  preserved  to  this  time. 
In  the  new  order  of  things,  therefore,  it  could  not  keep 
pace ;  it  had  lost  its  pliancy,  and  with  it  the  power  to  fol- 
low new  modes  of  thought.  In  this  necessity  to  create 
new  terms  in  order  to  express  new  ideas,  the  Latin  proved 
eminently  useful,  and  readily  supplied  what  was  wanting 
in  Saxon.  Hence  it  is  that,  to  this  day,  the  Saxon  words 
of  our  English  have  to  do  with  the  sensible  world,  foreign 
words  with  the  spiritual ;  the  former  stand  for  things  par- 
ticular and  concrete,  the  latter  for  things  general  and  ab- 
stract. Where  this  does  not  seem  to  be  the  case,  two  terms 
are  apt  to  present  themselves  for  one  and  the  same  idea. 

For  the  Latin  of  the  Norman-French  enriched  our 
tongue,  not  only  with  new  words,  but  also  with  many  syno- 
nyms, both  of  which  now  express  one  and  the  same  idea 
with  apparently  slight,  but  in  reality  quite  important  differ- 
ences of  meaning,  once  by  an  Anglo-Saxon  term,  and  then 
again  by  a  French  word.  Hence,  our  English  is  peculiarly 
rich  in  synonyms,  and  in  them  possesses  a  power  unequaled 


.    LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  41 

in  other  idioms.  This  is  one  of  its  most  striking  features, 
and  all  the  more  important,  as  these  synonyms  are  not 
double  names  of  the  same  object,  which  is  the  case  in  a 
few  instances  only,  as  in  ox  and  beef,  calf  and  veal,  pig 
and  pork,  but  mostly  express  delicate  shades  of  emotions 
or  passions.  Nor  ought  we  to  overlook,  in  this  connec- 
tion, the  equally  striking  and  suggestive  fact  that,  whilst 
all  the  gentler  emotions  of  love  and  kindly  warmth  are 
Saxon,  the  subtler  and  fiercer  passions,  jealousy  and  con- 
tempt, fervor  and  fury,  bear  French  names.  It  is  this  that 
gives  to  our  English  such  great  moral  expressiveness,  and 
enabled  Shakespeare  to  wield  his  marvelous  power  of 
clothing  with  living  words  so  many  of  man's  mysterious 
sympathies,  and  of  showing  us  so  much  of  his  inner  life. 

The  words  thus  introduced  into  English  were  generally 
pure  Latin,  and  have  changed,  in  the  process  of  naturaliza- 
tion, nothing  but  their  termination.  All  our  nouns  in  Hon, 
and  cion,  tor  and  iory^  ity,  ance^  and  ure,  our  adjectives  in  ary 
and  ory,  ic  and  ive,  He  and  ihle  or  able,  our  verbs  in  ate, 
act,  ect,  id,  and  fy,  belong  to  this  class.  Many  verbs  of 
the  same  period  were,  however,  introduced  in  the  form  of 
their  supines,  and  some  being  afterwards  verbalized  anew, 
have  produced  rather  awkward  forms.     Such  are  :  — 


abstraho, 

abstraclum, 

adj.  abstract, 

verb. 

,  to  abstract ; 

accipio, 

acceptum, 

accept ; 

acuo, 

acutum, 

acute. 

adooco, 

adcocatum, 

subst.  advocate, 

advocate ; 

ago, 

actum, 

subst.  act, 

act; 

exago, 

exactum, 

adj.  exact, 

exact; 

transago, 

transactum, 

transact ; 

and  a  host  of  others,  all  formed  in  the  same  manner. 

The  influence  of  this  Latin  on  the  structure  of  our  lan- 
guage is  seen  especially  in  the  so-called  periodic  style, 
indulged  in  so  largely  by  James  Hooker,  and,  we  must  add, 
in  connection  with  what  has  been  said  before  of  his  poetry, 
by  Milton  in  his  prose.  Dryden  was  certainly  not  unjust 
in  accusing  him  of  "  Romanizing  our  tongue  without  com 


42  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH.. 

plying  with  its  idiom,"  when  his  imitation  of  Roman  mod- 
els could  lead  him  to  say,  "  The  summer  following,  Titus 
then  emperor,  Agricola  continually  with  inroads  disquieted 
the  enemy."  —  Hist,  of  England,  Vol.  11.  This  may  be 
very  good  Latin,  but  it  is  most  assuredly  very  bad  English. 
Still,  the  periodic  style,  when  not  carried  too  far,  does  not 
want  its  admirers  even  among  modern  writers.  Many  ap- 
plaud, and  others  try  to  imitate,  the  stately  march  and  often 
majestic  and  organ-like  harmony  of  Milton's  prose.  Cole- 
ridge spoke  with  rapture  of  its  "  difficult  evolutions  and  sol- 
emn rhythm." 

With  the  Restoration,  however,  a  thorough  change  com- 
menced; the  periodic  style  gave  way,  and  the  simpler 
structure  of  our  day  took  its  place.  At  the  same  time, 
the  great  license  of  coining  Latin  derivatives  also  ceased, 
and  P^nglish  became  substantially  what  it  now  is ;  asperities 
only  have  been  filed  away  since,  barbarisms  refined,  and 
redundancies  thrown  out.  It  is  also  to  be  borne  in  mind 
that  whilst  on  one  side  this  great  fondness  for  Latin  terms 
and  Latin  structure  was  carried  too  far,  and  therefore  was 
censured  with  justice,  it  had,  on  the  other  hand,  a  most 
beneficial  influence  on  the  English  of  those  days.  For 
the  intimate  contact  with  the  graces  of  diction  and  style, 
so  prodigally  displayed  in  the  pages  of  the  great  writers 
of  Greece  and  Rome,  could  not  fail,  gradually  but  certainly, 
to  improve  the  taste  and  to  refine  the  style  of  English 
authors.  They  only  failed  when  they  aspired  to  copy  clas- 
sical forms  literally,  and  to  transfer  mechanically  similar 
graces  from  one  idiom  into  the  other.  Whenever  they 
were  content  to  imbibe  the  classic  spirit  of  ancient  writers 
and  then  to  reproduce  it,  in  conformity  with  the  genius  of 
the  English  language,  they  obtained  great  success.  Even 
Milton  occasionally  uses  Latin  words  with  such  tact  and 
elegance  as  to  show  what  great  beauty  may  be  found  in 
them,  and  how  much  of  the  force  of  English  must  be  at- 
tributed to  them.    Thus,  in  the  beautiful  lines  — 


LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  43 

"  So  from  the  root 
Springs  lighter  the  green  stalk,  from  thence  the  leaves 
More  aerie,  last  the  bright,  consummate  floure." 

Paradise  Lost,  V.  478. 

The  question  has  often  been  asked :  "  What  good  has 
the  Latin  done  to  our  English  ?  "  The  happy  effect  of  its 
addition  to  the  Saxon  element  is  seen  in  two  great  advan- 
tages which  English  has  gained  over  all  the  sister  languages. 

In  the  first  place,  English  is  the  only  one  of  all  the 
European  idioms  which  combines  the  two  elements  of  the 
Classic  and  the  Gothic,  of  ancient  and  of  modern  civiliza- 
tion, in  such  a  manner  that  the  Gothic  forms  the  basis  and 
the  Latin  the  superstructure.  In  all  other  instances  of  a 
similar  combination,  as  in  the  Romance  languages,  the 
Latin  is  invariably  the  principal  and  the  governing  element. 
By  its  own  happy  proportion,  English  can  much  more  fully 
sympathize,  through  the  overwhelming  influence  of  its  Gothic 
element,  with  modern  thoughts  and  feelings,  while  it  is  per 
fectly  familiar,  through  its  treasures  of  classic  origin,  with 
the  life  of  antiquity.  In  this  connection  it  must  not  be 
overlooked,  moreover,  that  whilst  the  Romance  languages 
arose  out  of  a  struggle  between  classic  Latin  and  a  Gothic 
barbarism,  which  was  at  first  utterly  destructive,  and  pro- 
duced its  good  results  only  after  many  centuries,  the  Eng- 
lish arose  out  of  an  amalgamation  of  civilized  Gothic  with 
Norman  French,  which,  so  far  from  being  barbarous,  brought 
with  it  a  culture  in  all  the  radiant  bloom  and  buoyant  pride 
of  youth,  and  infused  a  new  and  higher  life  into  native  civ- 
ilization. 

The  advantage  thus  obtained  was  not  lost  by  any  sub- 
sequent introduction  of  Latin,  especially  when  such  an 
addition  was  made  by  means  of  renewed  efforts  in  science 
or  art.  As  on  the  Continent,  so  also  in  England,  the  ser- 
vices of  the  Church,  repeated  in  the  same  unchanging  words 
since  the  first  ages,  kept  up  in  the  minds  of  the  people  even 
a  dim,  traditionary  understanding  of  the  classic  language. 
We  read  of  foreign  ecclesiastics,  who  could  not  speak  Eng- 


44  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

lish,  and  preached  in  Latin  —  they  could  not  be  altogether 
unintelligible  to  their  audiences.  Men  who  could  be  moved 
to  tears,  and  made  to  take  the  cross  upon  them  by  Latin 
sermons,  may  have  been  largely  acted  upon  through  their 
ears  and  their  imaginations ;  still  they  must  have  caught, 
here  and  there,  a  word  or  a  phrase  which  they  could  un- 
derstand. Latin  must  have  been  heard,  in  those  and  long 
subsequent  days,  all  over  the  land,  and  on  a  thousand  occa- 
sions which  now  no  longer  exist.  There  were  all  the  great 
teachers  of  universities,  who  lectured  and  taught  in  Latin, 
and  all  the  students  and  scholars  of  monastic  seminaries, 
who  disputed  and  recited  in  Latin.  Law  and  Physic  in  all 
their  grades  employed  the  same  language,  and  countless 
hearers  of  these  various  teachers  must  have  been  found  in 
every  parish  and  in  every  village,  from  the  parish  priest  to 
the  wandering  beggar,  from  the  old  man  eloquent  to  the 
poor  boy  at  his  convent  school. 

This  thorough  leavening  of  the  vernacular  with  a  classic 
element  could  not  fail  to  have  the  happiest  effect,  and  thus 
to  produce  the  second  great  advantage  English  owes  to 
its  Latin  element.  For  the  refining  influence  of  classic 
studies  contributed  with  silent  but  irresistible  power  to  the 
formation  of  modern  English.  It  was  through  this  agency 
mainly,  that  the  two  great  elements  of  our  language,  the 
Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Norman  French,  were  reduced  to 
greater  uniformity,  and  could  thus  as  readily  be  fused  into 
one  idiom  as  the  two  races  who  spoke  them  amalgamated, 
under  the  influence  of  wise  political  institutions,  first  in 
the  House  of  Commons  and  then  throughout  the  land,  into 
one  great  nation.  Thus  our  tongue  was  molded,  at  the 
same  time,  into  greater  elegance  and  harmony ;  its  deform- 
ities of  foreign,  imdigested  importations  were  cut  off,  and 
its  uncouthness  diminished.  Finally,  it  may  be  added,  our 
English  has  derived  from  the  Latin,  as  the  language  of 
the  Church  in  olden  times  and  of  science  in  more  recent 
days,  a  peculiar  coloring,  a  faint  but  unmistakable   per- 


LATIN  IN  ENGLISH.  45 

fume  of  classicity,  which  has  never  since  been  lost  entirely, 
and  is  by  no  means  one  of  its  smallest  charms. 

The  mania  for  Latin  terms,  displayed  at  a  later  period 
by  Pope  and  Johnson,  could  not  interrupt  the  even  course 
of  development  for  any  length  of  time ;  the  Essayists  had 
too  strong  a  hold  on  the  mind  of  the  people,  and  their  style, 
always  clear  and  elegant,  rejected  one  after  another  the 
incongruous  forms  introduced  from  abroad. 

Their  influence  on  the  public  taste  cannot  be  over  esti- 
mated, and  it  is  a  matter  of  just  congratulation  that  Addison 
should,  to  this  day,  be  a  model  for  eminent  writers. 

Strangely  enough  the  only  accusation  of  having  intro- 
duced more  Latin  words  into  English,  made  since  that  time, 
has  been  directed  against  Americans.  Among  other 
charges,  the  Rev.  Jonathan  Boucher,  the  learned  author 
of  the  well-known  Glossary,  rebukes  them  for  nothing  less 
than  "  making  all  the  haste  they  conveniently  can  to  rid 
themselves  of  the  language  "  of  England.  He  notices,  as 
an  evidence  of  this  crime,  certain  innovations  of  this  kind, 
collected  from  some  recent  publications,  and  mentions 
especially  the  words  to  memorialize,  to  advocate,  to  progress, 
the  nouns  a  mean  and  grade,  and  the  adjectives  inimical 
and  influential,  as  used  in  a  moral  sense.  It  need  not  be 
mentioned  here,  that  all  these  terms  are  now  in  universal 
currency  wherever  English  is  spoken.  But  we  cannot  even 
claim  to  have  originated  them  in  our  "heat  of  igno- 
rance, presumption,  and  barbarism ; "  for  most  of  them 
have  been  long  in  the  language,  and  all  the  merit  Ameri- 
cans can  pretend  to,  is  to  have  discovered  valuable  material 
that  had  been  laid  aside  and  was  nearly  forgotten.  Thus 
to  advocate  is  used  by  Milton,  to  progress  occurs  in  Shake- 
speare, though  as  yet  with  the  accent  on  the  first  syllable, 
and  thus  betraying  its  recent  introduction,  — 

"  This  honorable  dew 
That  leisurely  doth  ^o^rress  on  thy  cheeks," 


46  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

and  inimical  is  already  inserted  in  Walker's  Pronouncing 
Dictionary  of  1772. 

Even  our  own  day  is  not  free  from  the  silent  intrusion 
of  new  Latin  terms,  though  it  is  but  just  to  add,  that  the 
majority  of  recent  importations  come  to  us  through  the 
German.  Thus  we  have  but  recently  become  accustomed 
to  speak  of  animus  as  an  inner  and  generally  bad  motive, 
of  cultus  as  a  system  of  worship,  of  onus  as  the  special 
burden  of  an  argument,  of  status  as  the  visible,  political  or 
social,  condition  of  states  and  individuals,  of  curriculum  as 
the  appointed  course  of  studies,  of  ultimatum  in  diplomacy 
and  general  negotiations,  of  a  maximum  and  a  minimum, 
and  even  in  agriculture  of  humus  for  mold. 

Thanks  to  the  general  dissemination  of  education,  and 
especially  of  a  moderate  but  almost  universal  training  in 
the  classics,  our  own  country  is  peculiarly  active  in  nat- 
uralizing such  Latin  terms.  Here  even  the  masses  have 
learned  to  understand,  or  at  least  instinctively  to  feel  the 
meaning  of  words  like  extempore,  sine  qua  non,  status  in 
quo,  vice  versa,  cui  bono,  quid  pro  quo,  suh  rosa,  and  bona 
fide. 

It  may  not  be  amiss,  before  leaving  the  subject  of  the 
true  classic  elements  in  our  English,  to  refer  at  least  in 
passing  to  the  small  admixture  of  genuine  Greek  terms 
which  we  use.  Some  of  them  still  bear  the  impress  of  their 
foreign,  pagan  origin  distinctly  in  their  features  ;  others, 
however,  have  become  so  familiar  even  to  the  unlearned, 
that  men  would  be  not  less  surprised  at  hearing  themselves 
accused  of  using  Greek  words,  than  Moliere's  hero  was 
flattered  by  the  discovery  that  he  had  been  speaking  prose 
all  his  life. 

The  paucity  of  pure  Greek  words  of  older  date  in  Eng- 
lish must  be  partly  at  least  attributed  to  the  fact  that  the 
first  introduction  of  Greek  was  received  with  great  dis- 
trust and  much  apprehension.  Western  Europe,  it  must 
be  remembered,  knew  literally  nothing  of  it  until  the  fall 


LATIN  IN  ENGLIS 

of  Constantinople ;  and  as  late  as  the  sixteenth  century  the 
learned  men  of  England  were  perfectly  satisfied  with  Latin 
translations  of  Aristotle,  made  not  from  the  original,  but 
from  Arabic  versions  !  Greek  quotations,  which  would  occur 
now  and  then,  were  summarily  dismissed  with  this  marginal 
note :  Gr cecum  est,  legi  non  potest.  When  the  learned 
Grocyn  first  taught  Greek  at  Oxford,  imder  Henry  VIIL, 
his  lectures,  delivered  with  great  pomp,  were  looked  upon 
as  a  highly  dangerous  and  alarming  innovation.  The  very 
sound  of  Greek  appeared  to  the  fastidious  ear  of  English- 
men abominable,  and  such  as  "  no  Christian  could  endure 
to  hear."  Oxford  was  divided  into  Greeks  and  Trojans, 
who  waged  a  fierce  warfare  with  each  other,  and  even  ex- 
posed the  great  Erasmus,  who  had  been  a  pupil  of  Grocyn 
and  taught  Greek  afler  him,  to  personal  insult  and  gross 
misrepresentation. 

Fashion,  with  its  superior  power,  came  soon  aflerwards 
to  the  aid  of  the  dangerous  language,  and  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth  was  the  age  of  learned  ladies,  who  read  and 
wrote  Greek  with  surprising  facility.  A  whole  host  of 
noble  ladies,  with  Lady  Jane  Gray  to  lead  the  erudite  pro- 
cession, vied  with  each  other ;  some  merely  enjoying  the 
study  of  Greek,  others  making  .their  knowledge  useful  by 
valuable  translations.  Who  does  not  recollect  the  two 
Margarets,  the  bright  luminaries  of  the  household  of  Sir 
Thomas  More,  and  the  four  wonderful  daughters  of  Sir 
Anthony  Cook  ?  "  The  maids  of  honor  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
for  a  time,"  says  Warton,  "indulged  their  ideas  of  senti- 
mental affection  in  the  sublime  contemplation  of  Plato's 
Phaedo,  and  the  Queen,  who  understood  Greek  better  than 
the  Canons  of  Windsor,  and  was  certainly  a  much  greater 
pedant  than  her  successor,  James  L,  translated  '  Isocrates.* 
But  this  passion  for  the  Greek  language  soon  ended  where 
it  began,  nor  do  we  find  that  it  improved  the  national  taste 
or  influenced  the  writings  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth."  This 
was  naturally  to  be  expected  from  a  zeal  which  was  simply 


48  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

the  offspring  of  fashion ;  but  the  small  effect,  which  this 
prodigious  learning  had  on  the  national  tongue,  is  easily 
explained  by  the  profound  ignorance  which  prevailed  at 
that  time  among  the  lower  and  many  even  of  the  middle 
classes.  While  a  few  young  ladies  at  court  read  Greek, 
Shakespeare's  father,  an  alderman  at  Stratford,  appears  to 
have  been  unable  to  write  his  name,  and  under  a  king  who 
boasted  of  his  thorough  mastery  over  numerous  tongues 
nine  men  out  of  ten  were  content  to  make  their  marks  for 
a  signature. 

The  following  words  may,  however,  serve  as  examples 
of  Greek  terms,  which  have  entered  our  language  directly 
and  without  passing  through  the  intermediate  stage  of  a 
Latin  translation :  — 

XciXepa  (disease),  Cholera,  choler,  choleric,  &c. 

'Qpiiiav  (bounding  sight),  Horizon,  horizontal,  &t. 

Aixev  (tree-moss).  Lichen. 

KarapaKTos  (rushing  down),l  Cataract. 

napaAv(ri9  (loosening),  Paralysis,  paralj'tic,  &c. 

napoSdfj/  (outside  of  66$ri)j  Paradox.    So  Orthodox,  Heterodox,  &c. 

KaviLnr)  (tester  against  gnats).  Canopy. 

fiijpds  (dry).  Sere. 

"E/cToo-t?  (standing  outside),  Extasy,  extatic,  &c. 

'Evepyela  (in  the  work),  Energy. 

AiTovpyela  (public  work),  .Liturgy. 

Xeipovpytla  (hand-word),  Surgery  vice  Chirurgie. 

Besides  these,  many  others  are  of  course  used  in  works 
of  scientific  import,  numbers  having  found  a  home  in  the 
nomenclature  of  Natural  Science.  Our  own  day,  teeming 
with  new  discoveries  and  fertile  additions  to  our  knowledge, 
fabricates  a  vast  number  of  technical  terms  from  the  Greek 
—  with  the  exception  of  a  few  German  words,  the  only 
manufacture  of  additions  to  our  vocabulary  now  going  on. 
The  majority  of  these  terms,  however,  do  not  belong  to  the 
flesh  and  blood  of  our  language,  and  require,  therefore, 
here,  no  farther  explanation. 

1  Used  by  Pliny  X.  43,  for  two  purposes:  to  denote  a  waterfall,  and  a 
seabird,  rushing  down  upon  his  prey  —  probably  the  Solan  Goose. 


CHAPTER  V. 

ENGLISH   SOUNDS. 

•'  Words  are  the  sounds  of  the  heart."  — Chinese  Proverb. 

No  one  who  has  traveled  abroad,  or  listened  with  atten- 
tive ear  to  foreigners,  can  have  failed  to  notice  that  every 
language  has  its  favorite  sounds,  so  that  the  careful  ob- 
server may,  from  these  alone,  distinguish  at  once  the  nation- 
ality of  any  unknown  tongue.  The  pure  air  and  mild  cli- 
mate of  Italy,  the  habit  of  her  children  to  spend  the  largest 
portion  of  their  lives  in  the  open  air,  and  their  national 
endowment  in  point  of  music  —  all  these  are  well  repre- 
sented in  the  abundance  of  vowels,  which  characterizes  the 
favored  child  of  ancient  Latin.  The  Frenchman  makes 
himself  at  once  known,  and  by  no  means  always  most  pleas- 
antly, by  his  preference  for  nasal  sounds  —  a  taste  which  he  is 
fond  of  ascribing  to  his  descent  from  the  old  Romans,  and 
which,  it  is  true,  was  assiduously  cultivated  by  the  orators 
and  elocutionists  of  Gaul.  He  is  not  a  little  proud  of  this 
gentle  transition  from  consonant  to  vowel,  which  constitutes 
what  he  likes  to  call  the  musical  element  of  his  language. 
A  French  critic,  Diipuis,  went  so  far  as  to  call  these  nasal 
sounds,  from  the  analogy  between  the  diatonic  scale  of 
vowels  and  the  musical  notes,  the  true  bemols  of  the  idiom. 
The  German's  "jaw-breaking"  dentals  are  too  often  re- 
ferred to,  justly  and  unjustly,  to  require  illustration.  We 
know  much  less  of  the  palate-sounds  of  the  Slavonic  idi- 
oms, which  generally  require  such  excessive  pliancy  in  all 
the  organs  of  speech  as  to  make  it  a  comparatively  easy 
4 


60  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

task  for  the  races  who  use  them  to  learn  foreign  tongues. 
This  it  is  that  enables  the  Russians  in  Paris  to  speak  not 
only  good,  but  actually  better,  French  than  the  Parisians 
themselves. 

Our  English  has  the  sad  privilege  of  being  well  known 
among  the  languages  of  the  earth  for  the  frequency  of  its 
hissing  sounds.  It  has  not  only  the  direct  means  of  pro- 
ducing it  in  the  letters  s,  c,  z,  and  th,  but,  as  if  not  satisfied 
with  these,  it  gives  a  kindred  sound  to  numerous  combina- 
tions of  other  letters.  Thus  Addison  complains  bitterly, 
that  in  his  day  there  has  taken  place  "  the  abbreviation  of 
several  words  that  are  terminated  in  '  eth,'  by  substituting 
an  s  in  the  room  of  the  last  syllable,  as  in  *  drowns,  walks, 
arrives,'  and  innumerable  other  words,  which,  in  the  pro- 
nunciation of  our  forefathers  were,  'drowneth,  walketh, 
arriveth.'  This  has  wonderfully  multiplied  a  letter  which 
was  before  too  frequent  in  the  English  tongue,  and  added 
to  the  hissing  in  our  language."  So  grievous,  indeed,  is 
this  unmusical  abundance  of  sibilants,  that  more  than  one 
remedy  has  been  suggested.  But  languages  have  a  will 
of  their  own,  as  well  as  men,  and  no  power  on  earth  can 
mold  them  anew.  Matters  seem  to  have  been  worse  yet, 
in  former  days,  when  lisping  was  apparently  considered  an 
accomplishment,  for  Chaucer  tells  us  of  his  friar,  that  he 

"  Somevrhat  lisped  for  his  -wantonness, 
To  make  his  English  sweet  upon  his  tongue." 

Not  only  every  language,  however,  has  its  own  peculiar 
sounds,  which  constantly  reappear  and  thus  give  a  peculiar 
and  unmistakable  character  to  its  utterance,  but  every  dia- 
lect is  again  apt  to  have  its  own  exclusive  sounds.  So  it 
is  in  England,  and  even  in  the  United  States,  —  the  leveling 
process  of  universally  diffused  education  and  republican 
intermingling  of  the  masses  has  not  prevented  a  marked 
difference  of  utterance  between  the  South  and  the  North, 
the  East  and  the  West  In  England,  the  contrast  is,  of 
course,  more  striking.     For  instance,  the  people  of  Devon- 


ENGLISH  SOUNDS.  51 

shire  are  famous  for  their  spluttering,  turgid  enunciation, 
which  suggests  to  the  ear  a  tongue  too  large  for  the  palate. 
Far  more  pleasantly  sounds  the  monotonous,  but  soft  and 
soothing  drawling  of  Durham.  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  have 
a  peculiar,  almost  inimitable  sound,  which  can  only  be  de- 
scribed as  an  attenuated  whine.  It  is  found  again,  slightly 
increased,  in  the  famous  "  New  England  drawl,"  carried  to 
Yankee-land  by  the  later  colonists,  who  followed  the  first 
Puritans,  from  Norfolk  and  Suffolk.  These  peculiarities 
have,  however,  not  remained  stationary  in  their  first  home 
in  the  New  World,  but  followed  the  sons  of  the  Puritans 
to  New  York  and  some  of  the  Western  States,  receiving 
in  each  a  new,  peculiar  imprint.  The  speech  of  Northum- 
berland is  disfigured  by  a  burr,  and  an  exaggerated  Scotch 
accent,  for  English  becomes  harsher  and  broader  as  it 
gradually  moves  farther  northward,  and  even  there  the 
mountain  regions  have  again  still  ruder  and  coarser  sounds 
than  the  plains.  Lancashire  English  sounds  very  much 
like  Low-German,  the  broad  Piatt  Deutsch  of  the  plains 
of  Mecklenburg  and  Oldenburg.  A  boy  from  that  county 
sent  to  school  in  Hamburg,  landed  on  a  very  hot  day,  and 
finding  servants  who  drew  water  from  a  fountain,  said  to 
them  :  "  Will  you  give  me  a  drink  of  water  ?  "  The  reply 
was  :  "  Was  sagt  er  ?  "  (What  says  he  ?)  He  repeated  his 
request  slowly,  and  separating  the  words.  "  Du  kannst 
trinken  "  (Thou  canst  drink)  was  at  once  the  ready  answer, 
and  Modern  Lancashire  and  Old  German  were  soon  at 
home  with  each  other. 

The  English  of  Northamptonshire,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
singularly  pure  —  an  advantage  the  county  probably  owes 
to  its  central  position.  The  best  of  all  is  said  to  be  spoken 
between  Huntington  and  Stamford.  Already  Fuller,  the 
church  historian,  said  of  it :  "  The  language  of  the  common 
people  is  generally  the  best  of  any  shire  in  England,"  be- 
cause a  hard-laboring  man  of  that  county,  although  he  had 
to  acknowledge  that  certain  words   in  the   psalms  were 


62  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

"  above  his  comprehension,"  assured  him  that  the  last  trans- 
lation of  the  Bible  agreed  fully  with  the  common  speech 
of  the  country.  It  is  certain  that  many  words  of  the  "  well 
of  English  undefiled"  are  still  lingering  in  the  home  of 
Shakespeare  and  Dryden,  and  even  now  the  most  unedu- 
cated part  of  the  people  there  speak  excellent  English. 

When  the  English  traveler  leaves  his  home  to  cross  the 
ocean  and  comes  to  our  shores,  he  is  at  once  struck  by 
peculiarities  of  utterance  which  give  to  his  own  tongue  a 
somewhat  foreign  air.  He  is  apt  first  of  all  to  become  ac- 
quainted with  the  nasal  twang  of  the  genuine  Yankee  in 
the  New  England  States,  which  is  likely  to  be  familiar  to 
his  eye  already  through  the  amusing  works  of  Judge  Hali- 
burton.  There  is  no  denying  that  it  is  exceedingly  un- 
pleasant to  the  ear  of  those  who  are  not  accustomed  to  it 
from  early  childhood.  The  South,  on  the  contrary,  is  given 
to  a  slow,  drawling  utterance,  thanks  to  a  warm  climate 
and  indolent  habits ;  the  vowels  especially  become  very  in- 
distinct and  sound  very  differently  from  those  of  Northern 
men.  The  great  West,  again,  has  not  only  its  own  terms, 
but  also  a  peculiar  intonation,  which  may  be  the  result  of 
hard  work,  and  of  a  life  spent  exclusively  on  the  wide 
prairie  or  in  the  loud-echoing  forest. 

Intimately  connected  with  this  preference  which  every 
language  has  for  certain  sounds,  is  of  course  a  correspond- 
ing preference  for  certain  letters.  In  every  idiom  not  only 
certain  combinations  occur  more  frequently  than  others, 
but  the  individual  letters  are  used  or  neglected  in  so  strik- 
ing a  manner  that  the  type-setter  can  at  once,  and  in  fixed 
formulas,  give  the  number  of  letters  required  to  print  in 
each  language.  Thus  it  is  well  known  that  the  Latin  had 
no  aspirates,  the  Chinese  has  no  d  and  r ;  hence  Europe 
is  there  Eulope^  Ta-me-li-lca  is  the  name  for  America,  and 
the  name  of  Christ  is  disguised  under  the  form  of 
Ki-li-yse-tec.  The  Six  Nations  have  no  labials  at  all,  so 
that  they  never  articulate  with  their  lips  and  cannot  say 
Pa. 


ENGLISH  SOUNDS.  53 

So  averse,  says  Dr.  Jonathan  Edwards,  are  they  to  shut- 
ting their  mouth,  that  they  have  even  changed  Amen  into 
Awen  !  They  share  this  peculiarity  with  several  other  In- 
dian languages.  The  Society  Islanders,  on  the  other  hand, 
have  no  gutturals,  and  Captain  Cooke  was  to  them  Tute. 
Some  native  tribes  of  Brazil  have  neither /nor  I  nor  r  in 
their  language,  and  hence  the  Portuguese  accused  them  of 
being  a  barbarous  people,  without  fe,  ley,  or  rey,  —  that  is, 
without  faith,  law,  or  king,  in  their  language. 

The  final  result  of  this  frequency  of  sounds  and  prefer- 
ence for  certain  letters,  peculiar  to  each  language,  is  repre- 
sented in  its  laws  of  euphony.  These  are  as  characteristic 
of  each  idiom  as  certain  moral  features  are  of  each  nation. 
Euphony,  hov,^ever,  may  be  absolute,  founded  upon  general 
and  fundamental  laws ;  and  as  such  it  is,  of  course,  common 
to  all  nations.  It  may,  however,  also  be  relative,  inasmuch 
as  it  depends  upon  the  climate,  the  occupation,  and  the 
general  habits  of  a  nation.  Euphony  may,  to  a  certain 
extent,  even  be  personal ;  for  many  sounds  appear  harsh 
and  unpleasant  from  some  lips,  and  very  different  from 
others ;  as  generally  foreign  languages  sound  more  agree- 
able to  the  ear  when  spoken  by  natives.  Nor  must  we 
forget  the  influence  of  individuality  in  cases  similar  to  that 
of  Mortimer's  wife,  to  whom  he  said  — 

♦'  Thy  tongue 
Makes  Welsh  as  sweet  as  ditties  highly  pcnn'd, 
Sung  by  a  fair  queen  in  a  summer's  bower 
With  ravishing  division,  to  her  lute."  —  Henry  IV.,  Part  I.  1. 

Applying  the  general  laws  of  euphony  to  English,  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  the  language  of  our  Anglo-Saxon 
forefathers  was  at  first  nothing  better  than  the  language  of 
fierce,  untamed  barbarians,  hemmed  in  by  barbarians  as 
savage  as  they  were  themselves,  cut  off  from  all  inter- 
course with  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  roving  about  as 
"  sea-wolves  "  only  to  plunder  and  to  destroy.  Spending 
their  lives  in  gloomy  forests  and  on  the  fierce  ocean,  they 


'64  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

were,  like  all  northern  nations  under  similar  circumstances, 
given  to  stern,  often  morose,  taciturnity.  This  disposition 
gave  ,two  peculiar  features  to  their  vernacular :  it  made  it 
harsh  and  monosyllabic.  Both  these  traits  have  been 
handed  down  to  the  English  of  our  day.  We  cannot  agree 
with  Camden,  who  says,  that  "  English  possesses  as  much 
grandeur  as  Spanish,  sweetness  as  Italian,  delicacy  as 
French,  and  energy  as  German."  We  may  grant  it 
energy,  delicacy  and  grandeur,  but  it  is  not  musical,  it  is 
not  made  for  song  like  the  Italian.  What  prevents  this  is 
that  all  its  vowels  are  more  or  less  dimmed,  even  when 
accented ;  for  there  are  but  few,  if  any,  that  are  clearly 
and  distinctly  pronounced,  as  in  Southern  languages,  whilst 
the  skeleton  of  consonants  stands  out  bolder  and  barer 
with  us  than  anywhere  else.  We  have  a  compensation  for 
this  want  of  beauty  in  the  strong  vigor  of  our  stock,  which, 
if  it  be  harsh  in  itself,  is  peculiarly  well  adapted  to  bear 
grafts  of  a  more  sunny  and  softer  climate.  What  is  lost  in 
beauty  and  softness  of  sound  is  gained  in  brevity  and  con- 
cise strength.  A  more  serious  reproach  made  to  our  Eng- 
lish is,  that  its  sounds  are  even  now  becoming  daily  dim- 
mer, and  its  enunciation  fainter.  The  change  of  the  full 
my,  as  still  pronounced  by  Americans,  into  the  shortened 
sound  of  the  same  word  in  P^ngland,  as  in  the  orthodox 
"  me  lud,"  is  a  case  in  point.  What  exquisite  delight  we 
derive  from  a  truly  clear  and  accurate  enunciation,  and 
how  rare  an  accomplishment  it  is  in  our  day!  We  have 
heard  of  men  who  have  gone  home  after  one  of  the  late 
Mr.  Thackeray's  lectures  on  the  Georges,  in  which  he 
quotes  a  poem  by  Bishop  Heber,  to  read  it  over,  and  who 
have  declared  that,  though  familiar  with  every  line,  they 
had  hardly  knawn  what  it  was  until  they  heard  it  from  the 
lips  of  the  lecturer. 

It  is  unfortunately  but  too  true  that  English  is  becoming 
daily  less  euphonious.  Even  since  the  times  of  Elizabeth 
many  "  honeyed  "  words  of  Shakespeare  have  been  lost,  and 


ENGLISH  SOUNDS.  55 

this  deterioration  of  sounds  is  progressing  at  a  formidable 
rate.  We  must  attribute  the  change  mainly  to  the  ten- 
dency to  shorten  all  words  by  dropping  even  the  few  in- 
flections that  still  remain,  to  the  unsparing  introduction  of 
the  hissing  sounds  and  especially  the  letter  s,  and  to  other 
unmusical  innovations.  This  is  all  the  more  to  be  de- 
plored, as  we  ought  to  be,  even  in  this  respect,  more  care- 
ful in  guarding  words  from  corruption.  We  should  not 
forget  that,  as  Mrs.  Jameson  tells  us  well,  we  are  obliged, 
for  the  purpose  of  circulation  and  intercommunication,  to 
coin  truth  into  words.  It  is  important,  therefore,  to  see  to 
it  that  the  coin  is  not  adulterated,  but  kept  pure  and  up 
to  the  original  standard  of  signification  and  value,  so  that 
it  may  be  reconvertible  into  the  truth  it  represents.  If  lan- 
guage is  really  daguerreotyped  truth,  accuracy  of  language 
may  well  be  considered  as  one  of  the  bulwarks  of  truth. 
Is  there  not  something  inexpressibly  shocking  to  English 
ears  and  English  minds  in  the  Italian  idiom  which  gives  to 
the  guide  for  the  sake  of  his  glib  tongue  the  name  of  the 
great  orator  Cicerone,  which  values  proficiency  in  the  fine 
arts  as  a  virtue  and  calls  the  happy  possessor  a  virtuoso, 
and  makes  him  a  brave  man,  a  bravo,  who  murders  in 
secret?  The  degeneracy  of  such  words  does  not,  how- 
ever, depend  on  the  meaning  only ;  the  sound  is  of  great 
importance,  and  the  violently  curtailed  slang  word  hussy, 
for  instance,  will  never  again  rise  to  convey  the  charm  and 
the  dignity  of  its  full  and  original  form,  the  loving  house- 
wife. 

The  tendency  of  our  English  to  reduce  words  to  their 
narrowest  limits,  which  has  led  to  its  monosyllabic  charac- 
ter, is  in  like  manner  daily  growing  stronger.  It  received 
its  first  impulse,  no  doubt,  already  in  Anglo-Saxon  times, 
from  the  causes  indicated  above,  but  its  full  development 
must  be  ascribed  to  French  influence.  It  was  the  Normans 
who  silenced  the  final  e  in  a  large  number  of  words,  and 
thus   reduced   them  from   two   syllables   to  one.      "Ze* 


66  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Anglais"  said  Voltaire  sneeringly,  '•^ gagnent  sur  nous  deux 
heures  par  jour  eh  parlant,  parcequHls  mangent  la  moitie 
de  leurs  mots."  He  little  knew  that  his  own  countrymen 
were  the  authors  of  this  change.  For  in  the  French 
poetry  of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  century  we  find  mute  e 
already  very  generally  substituted  for  the  accented  e  of 
former  years.     Chaucer  sounds  it  only  in  verbs,  — 

"  The  more  quainte  knackes  that  they  make 
The  more  wol  I  stele  when  I  take," 

but  in  other  words  it  is  mute,  — 

"  Thcr  was  here  hwete  and  eek  here  malt  igrounde, 
Instede  of  melke,  yet  wol  I  gere  hem  bren,"  &c. 

and  in  the  popular  verses  of  James  Audeley,  soon  after 
1400,  the  final  e  is  invariably  silent.  Almost  the  only  pro- 
tection against  this  shortening  of  words  is  found  in  German 
words,  where  the  letters  g  or  v  preceded  the  final  vowel, 
which  have  preserved  and  even  developed  their  second 
syllable,  as,  e.  g. :  — 

German. 
falb. 
Galgen. 
gelb. 
Sper  (ling). 

This  process  was  subsequently  extended,  by  the  force  of 
analogy,  to  the  letters  r  and  /  preceding  g  or  A,  e.  g. :  — 

Anglo-Saxon.  English.  German. 

burh,  borough,  Burg, 

tealg,  tallow,  Talg. 

bearh,  barrow,  Bah  re. 

baelg,  bellow,  Balg. 

sorh,  sorrow,  Sorge. 

mearg,  marrow,  Mark. 

The  result  is  that  the  number  of  monosyllables  in  English 
surpasses  by  far  that  of  any  other  modern  language,  and 
this  feature  gives  it  a  peculiarly  direct  and  straightforward 
character,  equally  far  from  the  courteously  studied  and  in- 
direct French  and  the  lumbering,  intricate  German.     In 


Anglo-Saxon. 

English. 

fealve, 

fallow, 

gealga. 

gallows, 

geolve. 

yellow, 

spearva. 

sparrow, 

ENGLISH  SOUNDS.  57 

the  following  lines  from  Macbeth  there  are  fifty-two  words, 
and  of  these  fifty  are  monosyllables :  — 

"  That  is  a  step 
On  which  I  must  fall  down,  or  else  o'er  leap  ^ 
•  For  in  my  way  it  lies.     Stars,  hide  your  fires, 

Let  no  light  see  my  black  and  deep  desires. 
The  eye  winks  at  my  hand.  Yet  let  that  be 
Which  the  eye  fears,  when  it  is  done,  to  see." 

There  is  in  this  inattention  to  mere  sounds  and  this  strip- 
ping of  words  of  all  so-called  superfluities  a  great  mechan- 
ical triumph,  which  reveals  the  eminently  practical  sense  of 
the  people  through  the  practical  character  of  their  language. 
They  evidently  use  such  forms  not  in  order  to  chat  and  to 
amuse  themselves  by  the  mere  utterance  of  words,  but  as 
means  toward  action.  They  choose,  moreover,  for  such 
purposes,  the  shortest  and  simplest  way,  not  only  because 
it  suffices,  but  because  they  prefer  it.  There  is  even  some- 
thing poetical  in  this  perfect  mechanism,  which  thus  pro- 
duces the  greatest  end  by  the  smallest  means.  In  speaking 
English  the  mind  must  ever  be  thoroughly  active.  There 
is  no  abundance  of  words  here,  as  in  other  languages,  —  no 
fullness  of  forms,  no  minute  details  are  given.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  slightest  and  most  delicate  modifications  of  sound, 
accent,  and  position  must,  unaided,  convey  to  others  the 
subtlest  and  gravest  shades  of  meaning.  The  ear  must 
not  only  hear,  and  hear  most  attentively,  but  the  mind  must 
be  hard  at  work,  and  the  heart  at  the  same  time  feel,  in 
order  to  understand.  A  mere  hint  suffices  to  replace  all 
the  inflections  of  Latin  and  Greek,  and  the  spiritual  power 
of  the  language  is  thus  increased  in  proportion  as  the  full- 
ness of  forms  is  diminished. 

If  we  examine  the  letters  and  their  sounds,  individually, 
we  must  not  overlook  the  fact,  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  form 
of  our  English  lacked  some  of  them  altogether,  which  were 
supplied  only  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest.  Such  was  the 
modern  k  for  which  before  that  time  c  was   used.     The 


68  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Norman-French  gave  us  the  former,  but  the  apparent  gain 
was  our  loss,  for  at  the  same  time  we  lost  ch  and  h  as  gut- 
turals, pronounced  in  the  manner  in  which  they  now 
form  so  striking  a  feature  of  German.  The  combinations 
sh  and  ch  were,  on  the  other  hand,  introduced  with  their 
French  sound,  for  they  were  as  unknown  to  Saxon  as  they 
are  still  to  German ;  and  thus  sal  became  shall ;  cild,  child ; 
and  hirk,  church.  Even  now  the  Scotch  use  sal  for  shally 
as  in  the  quotation  "  Listen  or  ye  sal  rue  it,"  introduced  in 
"  Guy  Mannering,"  ch.  46.  Wickliffe  has  in  St.  Luke  sh(d 
and  elsewhere  schal,  but  even  Chaucer  still  says, "  shal  pay," 
836.  That  the  older  Saxon,  often  called  Semi-Saxon,  did 
not  give  the  modern  sound  to  the  letters  sch^  would  ap- 
pear from  the  fact  that  the  hard  sound  of  k  is  repre- 
sented by  the  same  letters.  We  find,  therefore,  in  contem- 
poraneous MSS 

chirche,  schulde,  chestre,  riche, 

worche,  thenche  (think),  seche  (sick),  liche  (like). 

It  was  this  varying  and  undecided  mode  of  spelling  which 
led  to  the  changes  from  French  soft  ch  into  hard  English 
c,  as  from  chat  to  cat  and  chapon  to  capon,  words  that  are 
even  now  interchanged  in  Normandy  and  Picardy.  C%attle 
and  cattle  are,  in  like  manner,  but  different  forms  of  one 
and  the  same  word  ;  and  our  modern  word  cater  has  hardly 
enough  left  to  prove  its  derivation  from  the  French  acheter. 
Fortunately  we  find  the  gradual  transformation  represented 
in  successive  authors,  for  whilst  Chaucer  still  says  achater 
in  his  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  570  and  elsewhere,  Ben  Jonson 
in  "  The  Devil  an  Ass,"  L  3,  shortens  the  word  already  to 
nearly  its  modern  form,  — 

"  He  is  my  wardrobe  man,  my  acater,  my  cook, 
Butler  and  steward." 

The  letter  (/  was  anciently  of  a  very  peculiar  nature  as  far 
as  its  sound  was  concerned,  and  this  explains  many  strange 
anomalies  in  its  modern  pronunciation.     It  was  certainly 


ENGLISH  SOUNDS.  59 

pronounced  like  our  y  in  yes  before  the  two  vowels  e  and  i. 
Thus  the  Anglo-Saxon  ^realew  became  3/ellow ;  ^yrstawdaey, 
yesterday ;  ^eoglere,  /uggler ;  yeong,  young ;  yeoc,  yoke ; 
yeta,  yet ;  yeolca,  yolk ;  yea,  yea ;  year,  year ;  with  its 
strong  inflected  plural  of  yore,  our  own  yore.  The  old 
yeard  is  now  yard,  though  yarden  sounds  differently  now, 
whilst  the  Scotch  insist  upon  pronouncing  it  yard^  and 
Americans  compromise  by  giving  it  an  intermediate  sound 
like  yyarden.  Its  compound  {w)ort-geard  does  not  seem 
to  have  ever  had  a  hard  y,  or  it  could  not  have  become 
orchard,  which  was,  curiously  enough,  once  written  hortyard, 
under  the  influence  of  a  mistaken  connection  wdth  the 
Latin  hortus.  Where  the  hard  sound  was  really  needed  to 
preserve  the  true  nature  of  the  word,  an  u  was  inserted 
between  y  and  e  or  ^,  and  hence  we  write  yuide,  yuilt  and 
^uise,  yuelders  and  yuess.  The  same  sound  seems  to  have 
been  given  to  y  at  the  end  of  words,  for  there  it  has  almost 
invariably  changed  into  y,  as  from  daeg  to  day,  weeg  to  way, 
hcelg  to  helly,  and  from  thence  farther  on  into  bellow,  belch, 
bulge,  budget,  and  bully.  Here  also  an  intervening  u  saves 
final  g  from  deterioration,  as  in  plague,  league  and  rogue. 
When  this  change  of  y  into  y  has  taken  place  in  the  mid- 
dle of  a  word,  it  leads  to  a  further  shortening  into  i,  and  then 
the  word  is  apt  to  become  monosyllabic.  In  wagon  and 
(Charles')  wain,  the  full  and  the  shortened  form  both  sur- 
vive. Generally  the  contraction  has  taken  place  in  Ger- 
man words,  as  in  — 


glo- Saxon. 

Ilnglish. 

German. 

haegel, 

hail, 

Hagel. 

faeger, 

fair, 

ftigol, 

fowl, 

Vogel. 

sugu, 

sow, 

Sau. 

nail. 

Nagel. 

sail, 

Segel. 

flail. 

Flegel. 

lair, 

Lager. 

maid, 

Magd. 

60  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

The  tendency  of  changing  final  g  into  w,  which  is  com- 
mon to  all  Teutonic  languages,  prevails  largely  in  English, 
and  thus  we  obtain  from  — 

Anglo-Saxon.  English. 

daeg,  day    and    dawn, 

drag,  dray,  draw, 

lag,  law. 

sagan,  say,  saw 

maga  maw. 

This  change  must,  however,  not  be  confounded  with  the 
constant  interchange  between  tke  Saxon  w  and  the  French 
g,  which  likewise  pervades  the  language,  and  gives  us  a 
number  of  valuable  synonyms.     Thus  from  the 

French,  We  have  English, 

garde,  guard  and  Avard. 

gardien,  guardian  and  warden, 

guise,  guise  and  wise, 

sergent,  sergeant  and  servant 

In  other  words  but  one  form  exists ;  thus  guichet  is 
wicket ;  garenne,  warren  ;  gdter.,  waste  ;  guerre,  war  ;  guepe, 
wasp  ;  gare,  (he)  ware  ;  gages,  wages  ;  Galles,  Wales  ;  GuiU 
laume,  William ;  and  Guelphs  only  Whelps.  How  little  the 
difference  between  w  and  g  was  observed  of  old,  we  see 
from  the  use  made  of  the  two  letters  in  older  poems.  The 
Romaunt  of  the  Rose  has  "  In  reward  (regard)  of  my 
daughter's  shame,"  and  the  Parson's  Tale,  "  Take  reward 
(regard)  of  thyn  owne  vallewe,  that  thou  ne  be  to  foule  to 
thy  selfe." 

In  the  MSS.  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  century, 
e.  g.,  in  Layamon's  "  Brut,"  Ernleye  and  others,  a  curious  g 
is  found,  written  differently  from  the  ordinary  g,  and  in 
English  prints  oflen  rendered  by  a  special  g  somewhat 
resembling  z.  It  is  evidently  meant  for  the  sofl  g  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  in  its  state  of  transition  to  y  or  i,  as  in  gif, 
gef,  if ;  gea,  geo,  you ;  geong,  gong,  young.  It  never  can 
have  had  any  resemblance  in  sound  to  z,  although  it 
was,  no  doubt  from  ignorance,  oflen  so  written  and  even 


ENGLISH  SOUNDS.  61 

printed  in  Old  English  type,  as  when  we  find  neighbor 
spelt  neizhour  in  Chaucer,  but  it  seems  to  survive  with 
Scotchmen  in  the  name  of  Mackenzie.  In  support  of  our 
theory,  that  it  is  but  softened  g,  we  may  quote  from  the  famous 
proclam|^on  of  Henry  HI.  in  1258,  "  We  senden  ^ew  this 
writ  op^"  and  from  a  MS.  in  the  Bodleyan  Collection,  78, 
fol.  48,  written  by  an  author  of  the  fourteenth  century,  who 
uses  the  peculiar  form  of  g  in  all  the  following  words  :  — 

'*  In  Englis  tonge  y  schal  ^^ow  telle, 
Gif  ^re  so  long  with  me  wyl  dwelle, 
Ne  Latin  will  y  speke,  ne  waste 
Bot  Englis  that  men  uses  maste, 
For  that  ys  ^owre  kynde  langage 
That  gQ  hafe  here  most  of  usage." 

The  Anglo-Saxon  combination  of  eg  became  in  Old  Eng- 
lish gg,  but  changed  its  sound  entirely,  under  French  in- 
fluence, into  the  modern  pronunciation  of  dg,  which  it  is 
not  known  to  have  had  before  the  fifteenth  century. 

Anglo-Saxon.  Old  English.  Modem. 

ecg,  egg,  edge, 

mycg,  mygg,  midge, 

secg,  segg,  sedge. 

In  some  words  the  sound  of  soft  ch  was  merely  inserted 
in  order  to  preserve  the  soft  sound  of  g  which  it  had  in 
French,  without  lengthening  the  preceding  vowel.  Thus 
the  French  juge  became  our  juc?ge,  and  hence  also  our 
badge,  ridge,  hedge,  and  wedge. 

Another  letter,  the  sound  of  which  presents  some  pecu- 
liarities in  English  in  common  with  g,  is  h.  Both  were  pro- 
nounced in  Anglo-Saxon  as  they  now  are  in  German. 
That  k  was  not  silent,  even  as  late  as  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, we  can  see  from  the  quaint  poem  of  "  Pier's  Plough- 
man," in  which  it  must  be  sounded  in  order  to  produce  the 
proper  alliteration,  e.  g.:  — 

"  Thanne  A;am  ther  a  hyng, 
^nyghthood  hym  hadde," 

and 

"  Yet  I  courbed  my  ^nee 
And  cried." 


62  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

"Letters/'  says  Seneca  (Epistle  114),  "like  soldiers,  are 
apt  to  desert  and  drop  off  in  a  long  march,"  and  thus  both 
these  letters  were  silenced,  mainly  by  French  influence 
again,  whenever  they  were  initial  and  followed  by  n.  The 
nasal  sound  of  gn  was,  in  the  eleventh  and  twelftij^entury, 
already  so  rarely  written,  that  we  find  in  M^of  that 
period,  alternately  montaigne  and  mountain,  cocaygne  and 
cocayne,  soveraygne  and  soverayne,  Alemaigne  and  Alemaine, 
Spagne  and  Spayne,  Whilst  k  and  g  became  silent  be- 
fore the  letter  w,  and  thus  gave  us  our  knight,  Znife,  ^now, 
X-nave,  rei^n,  deiyn,  ^nome,  nostic,  and  phlegm,  they  were, 
by  the  same  influence,  at  the  end  of  words,  changed  into 
the  true  French  sound  of  ch.  Hence  our  hirch,  church, 
starch,  bencA,  much,  rich,  bleach.  The  Scotch  alone  re- 
tained the  original  hard  sound,  and  still  uses  ilka  for  each, 
sick  for  such,  whilk  for  which,  kist  for  chest,  and  kern  for 
churn.  Its  conservative  tendencies  are  not  "vi^holly  to  be 
ascribed  to  the  character  of  the  people,  but  largely  also  to 
the  fact  that  Scotland  was  so  much  farther  removed  from 
the  direct  influence  of  Norman-French,  and,  when  the 
latter  threatened  to  change  it,  had  still  preserved  much  of 
its  ancient  Gaelic.  Thus  we  find  here  also,  alone  in  Great 
Britain,  the  original  aspirate  sound  of  ch,  which  was  com- 
mon to  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  to  the  Celtic  of  Scotland,  and 
thus  survived  in  its  Loch,  which  the  French  could  not  pro- 
nounce. 

Another  letter  which  has  lost  its  sound  in  many  combi- 
nations, under  the  influence  of  French  masters,  is  I ;  and 
what  is  most  remarkable  in  this  connection  is,  that  our 
English  has  preserved  it  in  many  French  words  that  have 
lost  it  in  France.  They  were,  it  is  true,  generally  imported 
from  the  Continent  at  a  time  when  they  still  had  a  sound 
at  home  ;  but  why  we  should  have  been  more  conservative 
than  our  neighbors  is  not  quite  so  clearly  perceived.  Thus 
we  have  fault,  false,  veal,  chisel,  salmon,  scaffold,  pencil, 
vessel,  culpable,  vault,  and  fool,  for  the  YtqucXx  faute,  fariXj 


ENGLISH  SOUNDS.  63 

veau,  ciseaux^  saumon,  echofaud,  pinceau,  vaisseau,  coupahle, 
voute,  and/oM.  The  explanation-  is  found  in  the  fact  that 
the  Romance  languages  have  all,  more  or  less,  the  same 
tendency  to  drop  the  sound  of  /  after  a  and  o,  or  other  in- 
distinctly pronounced  vowels.  This  is  not  the  case  in 
English,  and  hence  the  preservation.  Here,  on  the  other 
hand,  /  is  apt  to  become  silent  before  k,  m,f^  even  where  it 
is  still  written,  which  is  the  reason  why  we  do  not  hear  it 
in  taZk,  cha/k,  folk,  yolk,  haZf,  calf,  paZm,  halm,  and  quaZm. 
It  is  only  by  the  force  of  analogy  that  it  has  become  silent 
in  the  words  shouM,  wou^d,  and  couM.  The  Scotch  here 
carry  the  matter  farther  than  the  English,  for  they  pro- 
nounce gold  as  gowd,  full  as  fu\  call  as  caw,  fall  as  faw. 
The  liquid  I  of  the  French  —  their  I  hrouilU  —  was  lost  in 
English  apparently  as  early  as  the  eleventh  cenlury,  for  we 
find  there  already  William  for  Guillaume,  travailer  for  trav- 
ailleur,  doel  for  deuil,  perilous  and  marvellous. 

The  most  remarkable  of  all  old  English  letters,  however, 
were  the  two  signs  which  anciently  represented  th,  of  which 
one  was  used  at  the  end  or  in  the  middle  of  a  word  and 
had  a  softer  sound,  whilst  the  other  occurred  only  at  the 
beginning  and  had  a  harsh,  sharp  sound.  In  modern 
English  the  two  are  used  just  the  reverse ;  all  pronouns 
beginning  with  th  and  their  derivatives  have  a  soft  th,  and 
the  sharp  soimd  is  now  almost  exclusively  found  at  the  end, 
except  in  a  few  words  like  thin  and  thick,  in  beneath, 
smooth,  with,  and  in  verbs  terminating  in  the.  The  reason 
of  this  strange  confusion  must  be  sought  in  the  heathenish 
origin  of  the  two  letters.  They  existed  already  in  the 
ancient  Runic  writing,  and  had  been  preserved  even  after 
St.  Augustine  had  introduced,  with  Christianity,  the  Roman 
alphabet,  because  the  latter  had  no  equivalent  for  them. 
But  as  they  belonged  to  a  different  era  and  a  different 
faith,  their  precise  force  and  meaning  were  soon  lost,  and 
hence,  probably,  the  tendency  to  mistake  one  for  another. 
They  were,  moreover,  in  their  ancient  form,  unfortunately 


64  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

SO  much  like  the  letter  y,  that  to  this  resemblance  we  must 
ascribe  the  perplexing  custom  of  older  manuscripts,  to 
write  -continually  y  for  the.  Even  printers,  as  late  as  the 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  century,  continued  the  abuse, 
partly  perhaps  from  the  ignorance  of  transcribers,  but 
partly  also  from  pedantry,  and  Tyndale's  Bible  always  has 
ye  and  yt  for  the  and  that,  yereof  and  y'oi  for  thereof. 

Whatever  changes,  however,  these  and  other  letters  may 
have  undergone  in  sound  and  form,  enough  is  left  of  the 
ancient  letters  to  bear  witness  to  the  remarkable  conserva- 
tism of  the  English  people.  They  have  ever  disliked  rev- 
olutions, and  prefer  avoiding  them  even  in  the  realm  of 
letters;  they  have  ever  abhorred  violent  measures  and  a 
too  ready  abandonment  of  what  is  old  and  venerable.  As 
in  English -law,  therefore,  a  strange  adherence  to  old  usages 
and  otherwise  antiquated  forms  goes  along  with  practical 
eminence,  so  in  language  also  there  is  a  remarkable  con- 
trast between  antique  orthography  and  modern  pronuncia- 
tion. This  apparent  inconsistency  is  but  another  proof  of 
the  great  reluctance  to  change  and  thus  to  efface  the  traces 
of  the  past.  It  must  not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  in 
language  such  changes  are  next  to  impossible  ;  they  can  be 
brought  about  only  by  inner  necessity ;  external  agencies 
are  nearly  powerless.  Even  the  power  of  the  Caesars  could 
not  accomplish  an  innovation  apparently  so  trifling  as  the 
introduction  of  a  letter,  for  when  Claudius  desired  to  add 
an  X  to  the  Roman  alphabet,  he  found  all  his  power  in 
vain,  and  Priscian  tells  us,  in  his  great  work  on  the  Letters : 
"  Nulli  aiisi  sunt  antiquam  scripturam  mutareJ' 

We  Americans,  on  th§  contrary,  love  change,  have  no 
reverence  for  what  is  old  merely  because  it  is  old,  and 
reject  indignantly  the  doctrine  of  the  necessity  of  a  "  his- 
toric basis,"  for  we  live  far  more  in  the  future  than  in  the 
present,  and  have  no  past.  With  us  alone,  therefore,  could 
radical  changes  of  orthography  ever  obtain  largely.  Re- 
spectable and  influential  publishers,  supported  by  an  im- 


ENGLISH  SOUNDS.  Q5 

mense  capital  and  a  large  stock  of  energy  and  perse- 
verance, could  by  means  of  popular  dictionaries  affect  the 
spelling  of  a  nation,  and  induce  even  great  authors,  like 
Washington  Irving,  to  appear  in  their  new  and  arbitrarily 
imposed  orthography.  Their  influence,  however,  can  after 
all  be  only  temporary,  as  long  as  North  America  depends 
exclusively  on  the  mother  country  for  its  models  of  litera- 
ture. Even  on  broader  ground,  we  believe  that  these 
attempts  to  change,  by  arbitrary  decision,  the  manner  of 
writing  a  great  national  tongue,  must  necessarily  fail  for 
two  reasons.  They  are  neither  practicable  nor  desirable. 
No  combination  of  men,  however  powerful  in  themselves, 
can  permanently  control  a  living  organism,  such  as  a  lan- 
guage is,  with  its  steady  growth  and  self-wrought  changes. 
To  make  a  change  really  useful,  moreover,  it  would  have  to 
be  radical,  and  then  we  are  reduced  at  once  to  phonogra- 
phy. It  jnay  look,  at  first  sight,  as  if  a  large  portion  of 
certain  words,  like  the  French  viennent  or  aout,  the  German 
sieht  or  the  English  though  and  pshaw,  could  easily  be 
spared.  But  then  we  would  at  once  lose  the  historic  basis, 
which  is  in  Etymology  as  important  as  in  the  other  sciences. 
The  letters  in  words  of  modern  languages  may  not  all  be 
pronounced  now,  but  that  is  not  their  only  purpose.  They 
give  an  essentially  correct  image  of  the  pronunciation  of 
words  as  it  was  when  the  latter  were  first  used.  The 
written  word  has  remained,  the  spoken  word  has  changed 
continually.  If  the  form  were  to  follow  the  sound,  there 
would  soon  not  a  single  trace  be  left  of  the  language  used 
by  our  forefathers.  This  is  the  principal  and  all-powerful 
argument  against  phonography,  and  the  reason  why  the 
French  moralist  called  good  spelling  an  infallible  sign  of 
good  breeding,  "  for,"  said  he,  "  spelling  is  the  rationale  of 
the  written  word,  and  only  well-educated  and  refined  peo- 
ple know  that." 

We  should  be  extremely  sorry  to  see  the  words  of  Vol- 
taire, which  he  intended  as  a  bitter  sarcasm,  now  verified 
5 


66  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

in  English  :  "  Letymologie  est  une  science  ou  les  voyeUes  ne 
font  rien  et  les  consonnes  fort  peu  de  chose."  For  lan- 
guages change  already  rapidly  enough,  so  that  even  our 
English  has  many  words  of  the  same  origin  which,  in  their 
present  form,  have  not  a  single  letter  in  common,  and 
differ  in  meaning  as  far  as  in  spelling.  It  requires  all  the 
resources  of  Comparative  Etymology,  and  a  thorough 
familiarity  with  the  great  laws  according  to  which  letters 
change  in  languages  of  a  certain  family,  to  detect  the  same 
roots  under  such  varied  forms.  We  may  well  ask,  what 
would  have  become  of  English  Etymology  if  the  "  Fonetic 
Nuz "  had  been  started  a  thousand  years  ago  ?  It  is  safe 
to  assert  that  nobody  would  have  had  either  the  courage 
or  the  time  to  attempt  mastering  the  history  of  our  lan- 
guage. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

ENGLISH  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  ENGLISH  ACCENT. 

**  Accent  is  the  very  essence  of  words,  which  without  that  would  be  but  so  many 

collections  of  syllables." — Sheridan. 

Before  a  strict  judge  our  English  would  probably  not 
be  allowed  to  cavil  at  any  attempts  to  improve  its  orthog- 
raphy, as  long  as  it  adheres  so  tenaciously  to  its  almost 
vicious  mode  of  spelling.  It  must  be  admitted,  that  in 
this  respect  we  are  yet  in  that  happy  age,  of  which  Bums 
says :  — 

"  In  days  when  mankind  were  but  callans 
At  grammar,  logic  and  sic  talents, 
They  took  nae  pains  their  speech  to  balance 
Or  rules  to  gie,  ' 

But  spak  their  thoughts  in  plain,  braid  lallans 
Like  you  or  me." 

Our  orthography  is  the  most  anomalous  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,  and  English  makes  of  all  languages  the  wildest  and 
most  extravagant  use  of  letters  in  its  written  form.  Never- 
theless these  very  outrages  upon  principle  and  good  taste 
have  become  so  dear,  so  familiar,  we  might  almost  say  so 
sacred  to  the  mass  of  English  speaking  people,  that  the 
strongest  objection  to  any  reform  in  spelling  is  found  in 
the  grotesque  effect,  which  any  innovation  produces.  This 
impression  has,  as  yet,  proved  too  strong  to  be  overcome. 
Thus  we  have  to  bear  the  evil  as  well  as  we  may,  and  con- 
sole ourselves  with  the  undeniable  fact,  that  the  mere  learn- 
ing to  spell  is  to  the  child  a  training  as  severe  and  as  useful 
as  any  more  generally  respected  branch  of  knowledge 
taught  in  common  schools.     For  "  to  spell  English,"  says 


68  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Mr.  Ellis,  "is  the  most  difficult  of  human  attainments," 
and  this  difficulty  is  probably  the  most  serious  if  not  the 
only  impediment  in  the  way  of  its  ever  becoming  the  lan- 
guage of  the  earth.  Were  it  not  obscured  by  its  whim- 
sically antiquated  orthography,  which  disguises  its  words 
and  requires  long  years  to  learn,  it  would  certainly  be  the 
best  fitted  for  universal  adoption.  From  the  highest  to  the 
lowest,  all  of  us  have  at  some  time  or  other  become  familiar 
with  the  painful  uncertainty  of  some  word.  Ingenuity  has 
succeeded  in  devising  the  combination,  "kaughy,"  which 
sounds  like  a  familiar  word  and  yet  contains  not  a  single 
letter  of  its  proper  form.  Simple  ignorance  encouraged 
the  indignant  housemaid,  whose  letters  were  produced  in 
court  and  excited  great  merriment,  to  repel  an  attack  upon 
her  way  of  spelling  the  odd  looking  word  "  yf,"  with  the 
words :  "  What  should  wy  eif  spell,  but  wife  ?  " 

The  fault  is  an  ancient  one,  and  the  sin  has  been  handed 
down  from  our  first  fathers.  The  Anglo-Saxons  wrote 
badly,  the  Norman-French  wrote  worse.  The  former,  we 
ought  to  state  in  their  behalf,  had  neither  grammar  nor 
criticism.  Nor  were  they  specially  to  be  blamed  for  it,  for 
it  was  no  better  with  the  oldest  of  all  languages.  Ancient 
Hebrew  had  to  wait  for  the  Rabbi  Judah  Ching  to  write  its 
first  grammar  at  Fez  in  Africa,  in  1070.  The  Greeks  knew 
no  grammar  at  all  prior  to  the  Alexandrian  age,  because 
they  ignored  all  other  languages,  and  grammar  cannot  exist 
without  comparison.  Even  the  Romans  were,  if  we  may 
believe  Suetonius,  unacquainted  with  grammar  until  Crates 
Mellotes,  the  ambassador  of  king  Attains,  brought  one  to 
Rome  between  the  second  and  third  Punic  war.  How 
then  could  our  poor  ignorant  Saxons  have  one  of  their 
own?  That  much  ignorance  and  nnich  caprice  prevailed 
among  their  writers,  is  true,  but  this  also  was  more  of  a 
misfortune  than  a  crime.  They  lived  so  far  apart  from  each 
other,  that  they  could  not  "  compare  notes."  They  were 
all  monks,  whose  lives  were  passed  in  the  quiet  seclusion 


ENGLISH  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  ENGLISH  ACCENT.  69 

of  their  cells,  without  intercommunication  or  exchange  of 
thoughts  with  others.  Was  not  the  venerable  Bede,  their 
greatest  Church  historian,  an  inmate  of  the  same  convent, 
from  the  seventh  year  of  his  life  to  the  last,  his  sixty-second, 
without  ever  having  left  its  holy  precincts  ?  We  need  not 
wonder  then,  that  each  one  of  these  pious  men  had  his  own 
fancies  and  preferences  for  this  or  that  mode  of  spelling, 
to  which  he  adhered  in. all  innocence  and  with  perfect 
independence,  and  that  thus  no  two  versions  of  the  same 
work  are  ever  found  to  agree.  These  writers  were,  more- 
over, not  less  distant  from  each  other  in  time  than  in  place. 
They  wrote  at  great  intervals,  and  in  the  mean  while 
the  language,  never  quite  settled,  much  less  uniform,  had 
changed  much  and  often  very  seriously.  How  it  must  have 
fared  under  such  circumstances  with  a  barbarous  language, 
still  in  process  of  formation,  we  may  judge  from  the  fate 
of  a  well-formed  idiom  in  times  of  peaceful  development. 
We  are  told  by  Pegge,  that  when  Vaugelas  in  1659,  pub- 
lished his  translation  of  Quintus  Curtius,  which  had  occu- 
pied him  for  more  than  thirty  years,  he  found  that  French 
had  changed  so  much  in  the  mean  time,  that  he  was  obliged 
to  correct  the  former  part  of  his  work  in  order  to  bring  it 
up  to  the  standard  of  the  latter  part.  This  caused  the  wit 
Voiture  to  apply  to  it  the  epigram  of  Martial  on  a  barber, 
who  was  so  slow  in  his  operations,  that  the  hair  began  to 
grow  on  one  side  of  his  face,  before  he  had  fully  trimmed 
the  other  side  :  — 

"  Entrepelus  tonsor  dum  circuit  ora  Luperci 
Expungitque  genas,  altera  barba  subit."  —  VII.  83. 

Anglo-Saxon  writers  belonged,  moreover,  to  different 
races,  each  of  which  had  its  own  dialect.  England  was 
not  yet  one  great  kingdom,  and  it  did  not  yet  possess  a 
national  tongue.  Each  learned  monk  naturally  preferred 
his  own  native  idiom,  even  if  he  possessed  the  rare  accom- 
plishment of  knowing  another,  and  thus  new  forms  and 
new  spellings  were  continually  introduced.     Besides,  when 


70  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Christianity  was  first  introduced,  the  difficulties  it  met  with 
had  been  largely  increased  by  the  fact  that  its  early  mes- 
sengers were  foreigners,  utterly  ignorant  of  the  language 
of  the  people  to  whom  they  were  sent,  and  disposed  to 
abuse  their  power  and  legitimate  authority  in  point  of  lan- 
guage to  the  utmost.  The  priests,  also,  in  later  years,  were 
not  the  most  learned,  and  we  may  be  induced  to  judge 
them  less  harshly,  by  remembering  that  even  in  the  days 
of  Queen  Elizabeth,  as  Fuller  tells  us,  "  the  clergy  were 
ordered  to  con  over  their  lessons  by  themselves  once  or 
twice  before  service,  in  order  that  they  might  be  able  to 
read  them  fluently  to  the  congregation  !  " 

The  influence  of  the  Danish  occupation  on  the  orthog- 
raphy of  English  was  grievous  in  the  extreme.  It  did 
not  change  the  words  themselves,  because  Danish  and 
Saxon  were  kindred,  if  not  the  same  languages.  For  many 
of  the  Danes  were  no  doubt  Germans,  who,  rather  than  sub- 
mit to  the  iron  rule  of  Charlemagne,  had  taken  refuge  in 
Denmark.  This  very  resemblance  of  the  two  languages, 
however,  led  to  an  almost  boundless  confusion  between 
kindred  words,  which  resulted  finally  in  the  breaking  down 
of  almost  all  inflections,  and  in  a  serious  change  of  the 
pronunciation.  This  resemblance,  so  often  denied,  is  still 
susceptible  of  easy  proof  Already  in  that  remarkable  mon- 
ument of  distant  Iceland,  Snorre's  "  Edda,"  pages  275,  276, 
it  is  expressly  stated  of  Englishmen  and  Icelanders,  "  ver 
erum  einnar  tungu^^  —  we  are  of  one  tongue,  —  and  when 
Christianity  was  to  be  introduced  among  the  followers  of 
Odin  in  Sweden,  Anglo-Saxon  priests  were  sent  from  Eng- 
land to  preach  the  Gospel,  and  found  themselves,  untaught, 
sufficiently  familiar  with  Swedish  for  the  purpose.  A  mix- 
ture of  languages,  so  closely  related  and  so  similar  to  each 
other,  is  always  accompanied  by  fatal  results,  and  in  this 
instance  certainly  did  not  fail  to  produce  them  at  once. 
They  showed  themselves  mainly  in  a  largely  increased 
irregularity  of  spelling,  which  is  felt,  if  not  always  seen,  to 


ENGLISH  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  ENGLISH  ACCENT.     71 

this  day.  The  evil  was  still  further  aggravated  by  the 
fact,  that  both  Danes  and  Anglo-Saxons  were  accustomed 
to  great  license  in  their  earliest  mode  of  writing,  —  the 
Runes,  —  for  we  find  that,  e.  g.,  the  word  eftir  was  found  by 
the  poet  F.  G.  Bergman  to  have  been  spelt  on  runic  stones 
in  twenty-eight  different  ways,  and  even  in  monuments  of 
the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  century  the  same  word  still 
appears  in  seventeen  varied  forms. 

In  Anglo-Saxon  we  may  safely  say  that  the  vowels  were 
all  interchanged  one  with  another ;  and  this  freedom  ac- 
counts mainly  for  the  dimmed  and  obscure  character  of 
modern  English  vowels  and  their  strange,  ever  varying 
pronunciation.  The  consonants  were  somewhat  more  faith- 
fully preserved,  but  they  also  seem  to  have  frequently 
interchanged,  at  least  within  the  limits  of  their  particular 
class.  The  transition  becomes  more  evident  if  we  com- 
pare the  forms  which  the  same  word  assumes  in  different 
languages.     Thus  in  labials  we  find 

iafo'n,  nepos  ;        English^  nephew \        French^  n&veu.\        German^  }^effQ\ 

tjolo;  will;  Greek,  (Jovkoixai;  wollen; 

Anglo-Saxon,  cnapa;  knave;  Knafte; 

to  which  we  may  add  as  a  familiar  illustration,  the  ofl-quoted 
inability  to  distinguish  between  the  French  words  boeuf 
and  veuve,  ascribed  to  the  Basques,  of  whom  already  Scali- 
ger  said  sneeringly,  — 

"  Haud  teraere  antiquas  mutat  Vasconia  voces 
Cui  nihil  est  aliud  Vivere  quam  Bibere." 

Thus,  also,  with  sibilants,  e.  g.— 

Latin.  French.  English. 

placeo.  plaisir,  pleasure. 

licere,  loisir,  leiswre. 

secums,  »ur,  svre. 

With  such  a  tendency  to  vary  all  letters,  it  is  no  longer 
a  matter  of  astonishment,  that  English  should  exhibit  more 
remarkable  cases  of  mis-spelling  than  any  other  language. 
"  Take  a  dozen  MSS.  of  the  '  Romaunt  of  the  Rose,'"  says 


72  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Pasquier  in  his  learned  "  Recherches  de  la  France,**  Vill. 
c.  3,  "  and  you  will  find  there  as  many  different  forms  of 
old  words  as  they  were  taken  from  different  fountains." 
On  the  famous  tapestry  of  Bayeux,  which  contains  about 
the  amount  of  a  page  of  writing,  six  different  ways  of  spell- 
ing the  name  of  the  Conqueror  occur.  They  are :  Wilielmi, 
Willelmi,  Wilgelmum,  Willielmus,  Willem,  Wilel.  Of  the 
great  name  of  Shakespeare,  Halliwell  tells  us,  that  there 
are  not  less  than  thirty-four  ways  in  which  the  various 
members  of  the  family  wrote  it ;  and  in  the  Council-book 
of  the  Corporation  of  Stratford,  where  it  is  introduced  one 
hundred  and  sixty-six  times  during  the  years  that  the  poet's 
father  was  a  member  of  the  municipal  body,  there  are  four- 
teen different  varieties.  The  modern  "  Shakespeare  "  is 
not  among  them.  Well  might  already  Chaucer  say,  there- 
fore, in  the  last  stanzas  of  his  Troilus  and  Cressida,  — 

"  And  for  there  is  so  greate  diversite 
In  Englyshe  and  in  writynge  of  our  tonge, 
So  pray  I  to  God  that  none  miswrite  the." 

Fuller  mentions  the  name  of  Villers,  spelt  in  fourteen  dif- 
ferent ways  in  the  deeds  of  that  illustrious  family ;  these 
names  seem  to  have  been  written  down  as  they  were  seized 
by  the  ear ;  hence,  for  instance,  Rawlie  so  oflen  for  Raleigh. 
Neither  the  Duke  of  Marlborough,  nor  his  terrible  Sarah, 
nor  Queen  Anne  herself,  could  spell ;  but  the  worst  of 
these  short-comings  is  probably  the  young  Pretender's 
blunder,  who  wrote  his  father's  name  "  Gems,"  instead  of 
James ! 

Matters  improved  but  little  even  afler  the  introduction 
of  printing,  since  the  first  printers,  and,  in  fact,  almost  all 
of  them,  down  to  the  year  1531,  were  Dutchmen,  who  could 
neither  speak  nor  write  English.  We  find  in  Strype's  "  Me- 
moirs of  Cranmer,"  p.  60,  that  Graflon  sustained  his  peti- 
tion, in  which  he  asked  for  a  privilege  of  three  years  for 
his  Bible,  with  the  argument,  that  "  for  covetousness'  sake 
these  foreign  printers  would  not  employ  learned  English- 


ENGLISH  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  ENGLISH  ACCENT.  73 

men  to  oversee  and  correct  their  work,"  and  yet  they  meant 
to  pirate  his  work ! 

It  must,  unfortunately,  be  admitted,  that  even  now  our 
English  has,  as  yet,  no  historical  orthography,  and  that  a 
universally  acknowledged  authority  in  matters  of  spelling 
and  pronunciation,  such  as  the  French  Academy  claims  to 
be,  is  still  to  be  desired.  As  it  is,  the  matter  is  left  almost 
entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  popular  writers  of  England, 
and  great  credit  is  due  to  their  good  sense  and  the  innate 
conservatism  of  the  nation,  which  have  so  far  protected 
the  language  against  hurtful  neglect  or  violent  innovations. 
The  difficulty,  however,  is  insuperable  as  long  as  we  have 
forty-two  distinct  sounds  in  our  language,  and  our  defective 
alphabet  provides  us  only  with  twenty-three  letters.  The 
sounds  we  obtained  from  the  various  sources  which  have 
contributed  to  form  modern  English ;  the  signs  we  derive 
directly  from  classical  sources  only,  without  all  the  help 
that  these  sources  might  give  us. 

With  all  this,  it  must  not  be  imagined  that  this  question 
of  spelling  words  in  one  way  or  in  another  is  altogether 
indifferent.  It  may  not  be  considered  absolutely  necessary 
for  a  language  to  indicate  in  every  word  its  origin  by  its 
form,  but  in  an  idiom,  consisting  of  such  a  number  of 
heterogeneous  elements  as  the  English,  it  is,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  an  important  object  to  show  whence  they 
come,  and  this,  in  many  instances,  helps  the  clearness  and 
the  force  of  their  meaning.  We  do  not  like  to  lose  the 
suggestion  of  ph  pointing  to  a  Greek  origin  of  some  words, 
or  that  of  an  inserted  h  in  words  like  debt  and  doubt,  which 
recalls  to  us  their  Latin  origin. 

Even  more  useful  is  that  variety  of  spelling  which  indi- 
cates two  different  meanings  of  one  and  the  same  word, 
that  may  have  come  to  us  at  two  distinct  epochs  of  our 
history,  or  in  connection  with  two  separate  purposes.  Thus 
we  distinguish  between  canon  and  cannon,  cord  and  chord, 
dram  and  drachm,  draft  and  draught,  holy  and  wholly,  steak 


74  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

and  s*Mke,  though  all  these  double  forms  come  from  one 
root,  —  or  between  hays  and  haize,  sun  and  son,  mote  and 
moat, -mite  and  might,  sent  and  scent,  vail  and  vale,  which 
come  from  different  roots.  To  abandon  the  twofold  spell- 
ing for  the  sake  of  greater  simplicity,  would  involve  more 
or  less  loss  of  distinctness  of  meaning,  and  the  sense  would 
be  very  apt  to  suffer  by  the  dimness  of  the  form. 

Besides  the  formal  letters  that  constitute  a  word,  and 
the  conventional  sound  which  we  attribute  to  them,  there 
is,  however,  a  third  element  to  be  considered  in  all  words, 
and  one  of  hardly  less  importance  and  interest  than  the 
others.  This  is  the  Accent.  It  plays  the  same  essential 
part  in  all  languages,  and  exhibits  its  higher,  spiritual 
nature  by  its  very  diversity.  Almost  everywhere  we  find  it 
to  have  gradually  changed  from  its  earliest  nature  as  a 
merely  sensual  accent,  dependent  on  the  tangible  length 
of  letters  and  sounds,  to  a  second  nature  as  a  conventional, 
logical  accent,  determined  by  the  mental  power  of  the  word. 
Thus,  in  Ancient  Languages,  quantity  decided,  in  Modern 
Languages,  quality ;  in  the  former  the  accent  was  uniform, 
because  it  was  fixed  by  laws  based  upon  tangible  objects ; 
in  the  latter  it  is  varying,  because  it  corresponds  here  with 
the  different  ways  of  thinking  belonging  to  each  people. 
Latin  and  Greek  prosody  were  alike,  but  the  name  of  Napo- 
leon, familiar  to  all  Europe,  changes  thus  in  our  day :  Poles 
and  Bohemians,  who  always  accent  the  penultima,  without 
regard  to  length  or  position,  say  Napoleon ;  the  French, 
Ndpoledn  ;  the  Germans,  Swedes,  and  English,  Nap61eon ; 
and  the  Italians,  Spaniards,  and  Portuguese,  Napole6ne. 
"We  can  now  hardly  understand  the  vast  importance  given 
to  mere  quantity  in  Latin ;  and  the  great  and  lasting  effect 
which  Cicero  states  to  have  been  produced  upon  his  audi- 
ence by  certain  metres  he  employed  at  the  close  of  an  ora- 
tion, is  almost  incomprehensible  to  modern  assemblies. 
For,  with  us,  tone  alone  decides,  and  in  the  composition 
of  pqptry  it  commonly  suffices  to  make  a  syllable  long  if 


ENGLISH  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  ENGLISH  ACCENT.  75 

it  but  be  accented,  and  short,  if  it  be  unaccented.  In  fact, 
the  accent  is  in  English  as  in  Greek,  entirely  distinct  from 
the  quantity.  Thus  we  can  take  the  word  august,  with 
its  two  unmistakably  long  syllables,  and  accent  either 
syllable,  speaking  of  an  august  presence,  or  the  month  of 
August,  without  influencing  the  quantity  of  the  vowel.  Such 
at  least,  has  been  the  established  usage  in  English  since 
the  days  of  Latin  church-hymns  and  the  political  songs  of 
later  centuries.  For  it  was  not  always  so.  In  Anglo-Saxon 
certainly  prosody  played  a  very  important  part,  as  we  may 
readily  see  from  a  comparison  of  the  words  in  a  poem  with 
its  regular  rhythm  and  classical  metres.  We  learn  then, 
that  the  same  syllables  were  at  one  time  long  and  at  another 
time  short,  changing,  however,  their  meaning  with  their 
quantity.  Thus,  is,  with  a  long  i,  represented  our  modern 
ice  ;  with  a  short  l  our  is  ;  god  was  either  God  or  good ;  ac 
was  oak  or  the  obsolete  form  for  and;  hyrde  was  herd  or 
heard;  and  at  was  ate  or  at. 

Although,  however,  this  distinction  was  clear  to  the  ear 
and  so  important  to  the  meaning,  it  was  utterly  neglected 
by  transcribers,  and  is  now  most  difficult  to  ascertain. 
Prosody,  we  may  well  say,  is  altogether  lost  in  English. 
This  is  mainly  owing  to  the  influence  of  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, and'  it  took  place  during  the  time  of  the  change 
from  Anglo-Saxon  through  French  into  English.  The 
difficulty  arose  from  the  fact  that,  as  each  language  has 
its  favorite  letters  and  sounds,  so  it  has  also  its  decidedly 
marked  and  prevailing  accent.  Now  the  French  accents 
by  preference  the  last  syllable,  the  English,  on  the  contrary, 
the  first.  Hence  the  struggle,  for  when  our  English  was 
formed  the  French  words  lost  first  their  original  accent, 
and  then,  with  it,  frequently  their  spelling,  because  those 
vowels  which  were  now  left  unaccented,  became  short,  and 
others  which  were  accented,  gained  in  length.  It  was  thus 
that  partie  became  party  ;  ambassadeur,  embassador  ;  cheva- 
lerie,  chivalry;  gouvernement,  government ;  and  necessaire, 
necessary. 


76  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

This  process  was  of  course  not  the  work  of  one  or  two 
generations;  it  continued  during  several  hundred  years, 
and  we  can  trace  the  gradual  change,  in  almost  unbroken 
succession,  from  poet  to  poet.  At  first,  we  find  naturally 
the  French  accent  all  powerful,  and  it  remained  so  even 
as  late  as  the  times  of  Edward  I.  when  poets  still  said: 
tresoun,  haroun,  hatoun,  mirour,  mayeur^  somnour,  conseit, 
hattdille  and  heaute.  In  the  Romance  of  Athelstone,  which 
dates  from  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  the  accent 
is  still  on  the  last  syllable,  as  in  French  :  — 

"  An  weten  alle  be  comoun  as^nt, 

In  the  pleyne  parlera^nt." 
"  Both  his  castelles  and  his  toures." 

ReliquioB  Antiqius,  85. 

Chaucer  presents  us  here,  as  in  all  great  questions  of 
language,  the  turning-point  in  the  history  of  this  change. 
He  hesitates,  because  in  reality  the  language  itself  thus 
hesitated  to  abandon  the  French  accent  and  to  odve  to 
foreign  words  its  own  Saxon  tone.  Thus  we  find  in  the 
Canterbury  Tales,  "  The  Emperoiires  daughter,"  "  So  prick- 
eth  him  Nature  in  his  corages,"  and  "  Of  which  Vertiie  en- 
gendred  is  the  flour,"  "  Then  say  they  therein  swich  difficul- 
tly," "  And  forth  I  led  hire  sayle  in  this  manere."  In  other 
portions  again  we  find  the  modern  English  accent  already 
encroaching  upon  French  words,  as  in  the  lines  — 

"  And  sicherly  she  was  of  grete  disport, 
And  ful  pleasant  and  amiable  of  port, 
And  peined  hire  to  contref^ten  chere 
Of  court  and  ben  estatelich  of  manure, 
And  to  ben  holden  digne  of  reverence." 

Whilst  the  metre  makes  it  clear  that  at  one  time  we  are 
required  to  read  service,  solempne,  langdge,  maridge,  pen- 
ance, vitaille,  scolere,  honour,  curat,  and  viUdge,  we  find  in 
other  places  the  necessity  of  saying  tresour,  7945,  colour 
5068,  vtage,  4732,  and  conseil,  4746.  At  times  he  seems 
actually  to  affect  the  French  accent  for  some  purpose  un- 


ENGLISH  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  ENGLISH  ACCENT.  77 

known  to  us,  and  th^n  he  is  apt  to  make  two  syllables  out 
of  one,  for  the  occasion,  contrary  to  the  general  tendency 
of  our  idiom,  e.  g.,  — 

"  A  clerke  there  was  of  Oxenforde  also, 
That  unto  Logicke  hadde  long  ygo, 
And  km  was  his  horse  as  is  a  rake, 
And  he  was  not  right  fat,  I  undertake." 

Canterbury  Tales. 

This  abuse  of  words,  which  have  not  of  course  maintained 
their  lengthened  form,  can  hardly  arise  from  neglect,  as  has 
sometimes  been  claimed,  because  in  that  case  contemporaries 
would  hardly  have  praised  his  verses  so  much  for  their  reg- 
ularity, and  beauty  of  sound. 

For  some  time  after  him  the  French  accent  probably 
maintained  its  supremacy,  but  ultimately  almost  all  im- 
ported words  adopted  the  English  accent  entirely,  and 
they  have  ever  since  retained  it  unchanged.  This  change 
shows  more  clearly  than  any  other  modification  in  form  or 
sound,  because  in  a  more  spiritual  manner,  that  the  pre- 
dominant genius  of  our  language,  in  its  music  as  well  as 
in  its  grammar,  was  English  still. 

Spenser  still  says  forest,  furious,  hideous,  daUiaunce,  mer- 
riment,  and  in  his  "  Fairy  Queen,"  VII.  7,  we  must  read  :  — 

"  In  a  fayre  plain  upon  an  equall  hill 
She  placed  was  in  a  pavillion, 
Not  such  as  craftsmen  by  their  idle  skill 
Are  wont  for  princes  states  to  fashi6n, 
But  the  earth  herself  of  her  owne  motidn,"  &c. 

In  thus  tracing  the  gradual  rise  and  final  triumph  of  the 
German  accent  in  our  English,  we  must  not  overlook  the  fact, 
that  it  probably  prevailed  among  the  mass  of  the  people, 
who  were  so  largely  Saxon,  long  before  authors,  who  wrote 
for  the  great,  and  consequently  mainly  for  the  French,  dared 
adopt  it  in  their  writings.  John  Skelton  occasionally  uses 
the  foreign  form,  perhaps  principally  for  the  sake  of  the  me- 
tre, as  when  he  says  qicerele,  counsele,  mercy,  and  pleasure  / 


^TTirmiTjcfT*  J 


78  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

but  on  the  whole  we  must  admit  that  he,  as  well  as  Thomas 
Wyatt  and  the  Earl  of  Surry,  shows  but  few  deviations 
from  the  modern  accent.  The  latter  especially,  so  impor- 
tant in  this  aspect  on  account  of  the  far-famed  regularity 
and  beauty  of  his  verse,  has  almost  invariably  the  German 
accent  on  French  words,  even  where  it  appears  to  us 
objectionable,  as  in  commendable  and  irrefragable.  Other 
authors  were,  of  course,  not  always  as"  strict  in  observing, 
or  as  correct  in  determining,  the  proper  accent.  It  is  amus- 
ing to  see  some  authors  of  those  days  writing  not  by  the 
eye,  but  apparently  by  the  ear  only  ;  they  let  us  thus,  un- 
consciously, into  the  secret  of  the  true  pronunciation  of 
words  in  their  days.  Audeley,  a  good  poet,  but  not  a  very 
learned  man,  of  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century,  thus 
writes  naively,  correxeon,  cruel,  treusone,  personache  and 
knowlache. 

Amid  this  mass  of  words,  carried  along  by  the  general 
current  of  the  language,  and  representing  the  struggle  be- 
tween the  French  accent,  which  loves  the  end  of  words,  and 
the  English  accent,  which  always  seeks  the  beginning  of 
words,  we  meet  with  numerous  and  instructive  instances  of 
the  manner  in  which  the  accent  will  show  the  date  of  in- 
troduction of  new  words.  Thus  in  1684  coffee  and  tea  had 
evidently  not  yet  become  familiar,  for  Locke  writes  them 
caffe  and  the.  Hence  it  is  a  sign  of  recent  existence  in 
English,  when  Chaucer  writes  nature,  Milton  prostrate,  Syl- 
vester theatre,  Cowley  academy,  Dryden  essay,  and  Pope 
harrier  and  effort.  This  is  not  poetic  license,  as  some 
have  maintained,  but  simply  an  evidence  that  these  and 
similar  words  were  still  French,  and  bore  the  French 
accent. 

A  somewhat  analogous  change  of  accent  is  even  now 
going  on  in  the  transition  of  certain  words  from  the  Northern 
States  of  the  Union  to  the  Southern  States.  While  the 
former  adhere  strictly  to  the  tendency  of  the  English  accent 
toward  the  root  and  the  beginning  of  words,  the  South  not 


ENGLISH  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  ENGLISH  ACCENT.  79 

unfreqiiently  carries  it  forward,  as  in  the  name  of  one  of 
the  States,  which  is  thus  sometimes  called  Arkansas  (not 
from  any  supposed  Indian  analogy),  and  at  other  times 


Modern  French  words  retain,  of  course,  their  own  ac- 
cent, as  well  as  their  own  spelling,  as  long  as  they  are  not 
fully  naturalized.  We  have  not  yet  entirely  Anglicised, 
although  we  cannot  viery  well  do  without  words  like  protege, 
prestige,  menage,  passee,  ennui,  outre,  billet  doux,  amour,  and 
connoisseur.  But  we  notice  also  that  as  soon  as  the  sound 
is  changed  and  made  to  agree  with  our  English  mode  of 
pronunciation,  the  accent  follows  as  a  matter  of  course,  and 
we  say  bureau,  packet,  office,  &c.  Occasionally,  it  is  true, 
the  conflict  has  not  yet  been  decided ;  for  although  our 
English  has  always  achieved  the  naturalization  of  foreign 
words,  and  thus  preserved  its  national  integrity  by  insisting 
upon  its  own  accentuation,  as  well  as  its  own  pronunciation, 
the  process  is  necessarily  not  one  of  violent  suddenness, 
and  requires  some  time.  Good  authorities  still  hesitate  be- 
tween retinue  and  retinue,  revenue  and  revenue,  advertise- 
ment and  advertisement,  committee  and  committee.  This 
applies  not  to  French  only,  but  to  all  foreign  words.  When 
we  treat  the  lovely  flower  of  the  anemone  as  a  Greek  word, 
referring  to  Bion's  account  of  the  change  of  Adonis, 

"  Aljita  poSbv  TcKTet,  raSe  BaKpva  ttjv  'Ave/xwvov," 

we  call  it  anemone,  but  as  soon  as  we  speak  of  it  as  a  true 
English  flower,  it  changes  into  "  our  own  anemone.''  Some 
French  words  have  been  twice  or  oflener  incorporated  into 
English  at  different  periods,  and  few  facts  in  connection 
with  the  history  of  our  language  are  more  instructive  than 
the  clear  and  precise  manner  in  which  the  latter  ever 
reflects  the  features  of  historical  changes.  Such  double 
forms  of  the  same  word,  differing  only  in  accent,  show  at 
the  same  time  the  importance  of  what  at  first  sight  would 
appear  a  very  trifling,  and  often  hardly  perceptible,  varia- 
tion, and  that  in  these  cases  it  is  the  accent  alone  which 


80  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

alters  the  whole  nature  and  meaning  of  hundreds  of  our 
words.  Thus  it  is  with  antic  and  antique,  human  and  hu- 
mane^ essay  and  assay,  custom  and  costume,  urban  and  urbane, 
gentle  and  genteel,  property  and  propriety,  desert  and  desert^ 
mcense  and  incense,  gallant  and  gallant,  august  and  august. 

Where  there  is  a  slight  change  of  orthography  connected 
with  a  change  of  accent,  as  in  some  of  these  examples,  it  is 
an  evidence  of  the  effect  which  the  latter  seldom  fails  to  ex- 
ercise on  the  form  of  the  word.  The  accented  syllable  must 
needs  be  dwelt  upon  longer  by  the  voice  than  the  others, 
and  hence  will  soon  be  represented  in  writing  also  as  a  long 
one.  Hence  we  find  that  e.  g.,  the  French  conseil,  montagne, 
and  fontaine  have  lengthened  their  accented  first  syllable, 
and  have  thus  become  council  [by  the  side  of  consul]  moun- 
tain, and  fountain  ;  whilst  in  costume  and  genteel  it  was  the 
last  syllable  that  underwent  such  a  change,  leaving  again 
custom  and  gentle  (with  Gentile)  by  their  side.  Hence,  also, 
crevasse,  which  still  continues  in  use  in  the  States  adjoining 
the  lower  Mississippi,  has  become,  by  the  effect  of  an  al- 
tered accent,  crevice  ;  orison,  which  was  long  pronounced 
with  a  long  i,  is  now  more  commonly  orison,  and  bourgeois 
has  shortened  into  burgess.  In  words  like  gouvemement, 
jugement,  and  capitaine,  the  transfer  of  the  accent  has  led 
to  the  loss  of  a  syllable,  for  they  are  now  only  government 
(with  a  tendency  to  throw  even  the  middle  n  out),  judgment 
and  captain.  Others  have  their  full  form  in  writing  yet,  but 
are  gradually  losing  a  part  of  their  substance  in  pronun- 
ciation, as  in  medicine,  where  the  first  i  is  generally  silent. 

Some  accents  are  of  quite  modern  origin,  and  not  unfre- 
quently  even  whimsical.  The  word  disciple  presents  an 
almost  unique  example  of  advancing  the  accent,  in  direct 
violation  of  the  general  tendency  of  the  language.  It  was 
anciently  pronounced  disciple,  and  with  such  emphasis  as 
to  be  oflen  written  disple.  The  word  balcony  has  only  so 
recently  changed  from  its  former  accentuation  as  balcony, 
that  the  poet  Rogers  complained  of  it  bitterly,  saying, 
"  Contemplate  is  bad  enough,  balcony  makes  me  sick." 


CHAPTER  Vn. 

NAMES    OF   PLACES. 
"  Verba  sunt  rerom  notoe."  —  Cic.  Top.  8. 

Names  are  the  records  of  things,  and  especially  so  when 
we  examine  the  names  of  places,  and  read  in  them  their 
own  history.  It  is  but  too  little  known,  or  at  least  too 
rarely  thought  of,  that  names  are  in  no  language  words 
arbitrarily  chosen,  much  less  the  product  of  chance,  but 
that  they  have  all  a  meaning  and  a  history.  That  we  can- 
not always  decipher  the  former  and  retrace  the  latter, 
ought  to  be  but  an  incentive  to  search  more  carefully  for 
those  facts  which  are  within  our  reach.  The  difficulty  itself 
was  acknowledged  by  a  great  master  of  antiquity,  for  Plato 
says  already  in  his  Cratylus,  "  O,  Hermogenes,  son  of  Hip- 
ponicus,  there  is  an  old  proverb,  that  beautiful  things  are 
somehow  difficult  to  learn.  Now  the  learning  relating  to 
names  happens  to  be  no  small  affair."  So  it  is  in  our  Eng- 
lish, but  great  is  also  the  reward.  Nowhere  are  we  made 
more  clearly  to  see  and  more  fully  to  feel  that  words  are 
the  most  vital  and  most  imperishable  of  man's  creations, 
than  in  the  historical  names  of  places.  We  find  here 
above  all  that,  "  as  words  are  mysterious  in  their  origin,  so 
have  they  something  of  an  awful  force  and  intensity  of  life, 
which  dves  them  a  perpetuity  beyond  the  decay  of  races, 
and  the  revolutions  of  empires."  To  trace  local  names,  it 
is  true,  has,  on  account  of  its  great  difficulty,  led  to  much 
absurd  guesswork,  and  confirmed  the  ofl-repeated  accusa- 
tion, that  etymology  was  but  the  "  scientia  ad  lihitumJ'  We 
ought  not  to  forget,  however,  that  as  astronomy  arose  from 


82  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

astrology,  and  chemistry  from  alchemy,  so,  generally, "  truth 
cometh  out  of  error."  Besides,  guesses  in  themselves  are 
interesting,  and  in  the  majority  of  cases  the  only  means 
of  sifting  out  of  much  chaff  the  precious  grain  of  truth. 
Inquiries  into  the  meaning  of  the  names  of  places  form 
tributary  streams  of  history,  as  that  excellent  journal, 
"  Notes  and  Queries,"  has  now  for  many  a  year  proved 
most  successfully.  They  serve  to  point  out  and  to  estab- 
lish the  changes  of  races  who  have  inhabited  the  land ; 
they  remind  us  of  extinct  customs  and  superstitions ;  they 
augment  our  interest  in  our  own  and  foreign  countries  by 
revealing  the  deep  impress  of  our  common  humanity,  even 
•on  what  at  first  appears  a  set  of  purposeless  sounds.  Is 
there  not  a  peculiar  charm  and  a  deep-felt  interest  in  the 
fact  that  the  name  of  Great  Britain  should  be  at  the  same 
time  the  oldest,  lost  in  the  remoteness  of  antiquity,  and  the 
most  modern,  by  which  the  greatest  kingdom  of  the  earth 
is  known  to  mankind  ?  Does  it  not  at  once  bring  before 
the  mind,  and  very  forcibly,  the  singular  union  in  England 
of  the  most  ancient  traditions  with  the  most  vigorous  mani- 
festations of  modern  life  and  civilization  ?  Thus  it  is  more 
or  less  with  all  local  names,  but  especially  so  with  English 
names,  for  nowhere  can  the  fusion  of  races,  by  which  the 
existing  population  of  a  country  has  been  formed,  be  so 
clearly  traced  through  the  names  of  persons  and  places  as 
in  England.  The  more  closely  we  investigate  them,  the 
more  accurately  do  we  learn  to  assign  to  each  race  its  due 
share  in  the  fusion,  and  as  this  connection  with  the  races 
of  our  forefathers  is  by  far  the  most  interesting  feature  in 
their  history,  we  propose  to  give  a  brief  account  of  the 
various  sources  from  which  they  were  derived. 

If  we  were  to  believe  the  first  schoolmaster  in  England, 
who  certainly  was  "  most  strangely  abroad,"  —  Eugene 
Aram,  —  we  would  have  to  look  upon  Celtic  as  the  com- 
mon parent  of  all  languages,  and  especially  as  the  one 
great  source  from  which  English  is  derived  j  for  so  he  tells 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  83 

US  in  the  manuscript  of  a  Dictionary  on  the  Principle  of 
Comparative  Philology,  which  he  has  left  behind  him. 
Modern  science  does  not  support  his  theory,  but  the  large 
number  of  local  names  in  England  derived  from  the  Celtic 
and  still  retaining  their  ancient  form,  might  well  have 
misled  even  a  better  scholar.  We  now  know  that  some 
few  words  of  daily  use,  some  names  of  rivers  and  hills, 
many  a  surname  of  high  and  low,  form  the  tiny  rill,  the 
bright,  silvery  thread  of  Celtic  speech,  that  runs  through 
our  modern  English.  These  words  are  generally  of  no 
great  importance  in  the  language  ;  the  names  belong 
largely  to  small  and  obscure  places,  but  still  they  are  ex- 
tremely interesting  in  their  relation  to  history  and  in 
themselves,  because  of  the  difference  between  their  an- 
cient form  and  the  national  language  now  spoken  in  the 
same  localities. 

There  is,  moreover,  a  peculiarly  melancholy  interest  con- 
nected with  them,  which  arises  from  the  fact  that  our 
Celtic  fathers  have  left  here  and  there  a  ruined  temple  and 
a  few  popular  superstitions  behind  them,  sad  relics  of  their 
pagan  worship,  but  scarcely  any  clear  and  decided  trace 
of  their  influence  on  the  language  or  the  institutions  of 
England.  It  has  been  asserted  by  high  authority  that  the 
Arabic  words  which  are  found  in  English  are  of  more 
direct  influence  on  the  higher  interests  of  man  than  all  the 
Celtic  words  we  have.  And  yet,  no  idiom  shows  more 
clearly  than  the  Celtic  the  marvellous  vitality  of  languages^ 
how  tenaciously  they  adhere  to  the  soil,  how  they  die  only 
with  the  extinction  of  their  race,  and  often  survive  it  for 
ages.  The  Celtic  had  from  of  old  apparently  less  vitality, 
less  power  of  resistance,  than  any  other  language  of 
Europe.  Tn  its  whole  known  history,  in  England  and  on 
the  Continent,  it  has  never  made  a  conquest ;  for  the 
trifling  inroad  it  is  said  to  have  made  from  Wales  into  the 
adjoining  counties  can  hardly  be  counted  as  such.  Ever 
feeble,  ever  waning,  it  has  yet,  to  this  day,  never  been 


84  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

» 
entirely  extinguished,  and  still  survives,  to  a  certain  extent, 
in  France  and  in  England.  A  great  many  names  still 
linger  in  these  countries,  which  have  evidently  taken  deep 
root  in  the  soil  and  remain  there  long  after  the  race  that 
first  bestowed  them  has  given  way  to  another  and  more 
vigorous  stock.  Ancient  British  names  are  still  traceable 
in  many  towns  and  villages,  and  great  natural  landmarks, 
such  as  rivers  and  mountains,  have  retained  until  now 
their  first  names,  surviving  themselves  in  perpetual  youth, 
unchanged  amid  the  shock  of  revolutions  and  the  press  of 
invasions.  Trod  under  foot  by  the  stranger,  they  have,  by 
some  mysterious  power,  imposed  upon  the  conqueror  their 
own  language  untranslated  and  often  unchanged,  so  that 
many  names  are  found  now  in  use,  under  Queen  Victoria, 
which  were  already  known  and  in  use  under  Queen  Boa- 
dicea.  The  only  exception,  perhaps,  where  the  Anglo- 
Saxons  gave  entirely  new  names,  even  to  great  natural 
objects,  are  the  mountains  now  called  Saddleback  and 
Snowden.  But  these  isolated  instances  sink  into  insignifi- 
cance by  the  side  of  a  host  of  true  Celtic  names  like 
Thames  and  Tamar,  Avon  and  Severn,  Cam  and  Isis,  Otise 
and  Derwenty  Wye  or  Way,  Medloch  and  Lune,  which  have 
preserved  their  primeval  forms. 

It  is  peculiarly  strange  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
names  of  rivers,  and  especially  of  more  important  rivers, 
should  be  memorials  of  the  very  earliest  races.  They 
seem  to  survive  where  all  other  names  have  changed ;  they 
seem  to  possess  an  almost  indestructible  vitality.  Cities 
are  seen  to  rise  and  to  perish ;  the  sites  of  human  habi- 
tations are  known  to  us  no  more ;  but  the  ancient  river 
names  are  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation, 
and  from  race  to  race.  Even  the  names  of  the  eternal 
hills  are  less  permanent  than  those  of  the  ever-changing 
waters.  Over  the  whole  of  Europe  we  find  towns  known 
by  Roman  or  Teutonic  names  standing  on  the  banks  of 
streams  which   still   retain    their  ancient   Celtic    names. 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  85 

Throughout  the  whole  of  England  there  is  hardly  a  river 
name  which  is  not  Celtic. 

With  all  other  Celtic  names  they  most  abound,  of  course, 
where  the  Britons  remained  longest  in  power;  but  they 
furnish,  with  very  few  exceptions,  altogether  the  oldest 
topographical  nomenclature  of  England.  Hence  the  old 
couplet  relating  to  Cornwall,  how,  — 

"  By  tre,  ros,  pol,  Ian,  caer,  and  pen, 
You  know  the  most  of  Cornish  men  ;  " 

which  Celtic  words  signify  a  town,  a  heath,  a  pool,  a 
church,  a  rock,  and  a  head  or  promontory.  We  have 
already  alluded  to  the  strange  evidence  of  historical  jus- 
tice which  has  enabled  the  ill-treated  Celt  to  give  to  the 
empire  its  final  and  grandest  name  of  Great  Britain.  Of 
minor  names  we  have  the  ancient  Pen,  which  abounds  in 
Cornwall  and  Wales.  Thus  we  find  Pen  Pont,  the  head 
of  the  bridge,  and  Pendennis  in  Cornwall,  the  fortified 
headland.  Penrose  and  Penzance  both  mean  the  end  of 
the  valley,  and  Pen  Mon  is  the  extreme  end  of  the  isl- 
and of  Mona.  So  in  England  proper,  there  is  Pen  and 
Penard  in  Somerset,  Upper  and  Lower  Pen  in  Stafford- 
shire, and  numerous  other  names  of  like  origin  in  the 
midland  counties.  As  we  approach  the  north  the  Gaelic 
form  Ben  begins  to  prevail,  as  in  Ben  Morris,  Benlomond, 
Benledi,  and  many  others.  Cenn  is  considered  by  some 
as  another  Gaelic  form  of  the  same  root,  and  appears  in 
Kenmore,  Gantire,  Kinrose  and  Kenmare  in  Ireland.  But 
the  original  Pen,  as  a  name  for  mountains,  is  by  no  means 
confined  to  Great  Britain :  it  occurs  widely  diffiised  all 
over  Europe,  wherever  Celtic  races  once  ruled.  Far  in 
the  southeast  we  find  the  Pennine  chain  of  Alps,  the 
Apennines  in  the  west,  and  Mount  Pindus  in  distant 
Greece. 

In  Pen  Hill  we  have  a  remarkable  name  made  up  of 
two  words  belonging  to  different  languages,  but  meaning 


88  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

almost  the  same  thing,  —  a  pleonasm  arising  from  the 
ignorance  of  the  people  at  large,  to  whom  the  word  Pen 
no  longer  conveyed  a  clear  and  definite  meaning.  Similar 
repetitions  occur  elsewhere.  Thus  in  the  name  of  Wans- 
heck-water^  wane  is  probably  a  corruption  of  Celtic  avon 
(river),  heck  is  Norse  for  water,  and  water  itself  a  pure 
English  addition.  A  similar  instance  occurs  in  Calabria, 
where  the  romantic  Mongihello  shows  us  a  compound  of 
the  Norman  mont  with  the  Arabic  gehel,  which  has  the 
same  meaning.  There  also  the  reign  of  the  Arabs  had 
been  too  short  to  leave  in  the  mind  of  the  people  a  recol- 
lection of  the  signification  of  the  foreign  word,  and  thus 
was  produced  the  strange  hybrid. 

Besides  Pen  we  have  the  two  terms  Aher  and  Inver,  both 
meaning  mouth,  but  the  one  Cymric,  the  other  Gaelic.  It 
is  one  of  the  rare  instances  of  a  clear  line  of  division  being 
maintained  for  centuries  between  two  kindred  races,  that 
there  is  not  a  single  name  with  Aher  to  be  found  in  Ire- 
land, in  the  Hebrides,  or  on  the  west  coast  of  Scotland, 
marking  thus  the  outposts  of  the  Cymric  settlements  with 
unmistakable  precision.  Where  they  were  permanently 
established,  on  the  eastern  coast,  the  Aher  begins  again  to 
show  itself  frequently,  but  above  all  in  Cumberland,  to 
which  they  gave  their  name  and  where  they  left  their  mark 
long  after  their  final  expulsion  into  Wales.  This  Wales, 
however,  is  not,  as  is  often  imagined,  a  Celtic,  but  a  Saxon 
name,  for  by  the  new  invaders  the  Britons  were  looked 
upon  as  a  race  of  Weales  or  strangers ;  as  to  their  breth- 
ren at  home  the  Italians  were  also  Welshmen,  and  the 
Germans  call  Italy  to  this  day  Welshland.  Thus  the 
Anglo-Saxons  called  the  first  Britons  also  Weales,  from 
whence  our  Wales,  and  those  that  were  driven  to  the 
western  extremity  of  the  island,  in  order  to  distinguish 
them  from  the  former,  Cornweales ;  whence  their  land  has 
obtained  its  still  existing  name  of  Cornwall. 

This  distribution  of  Aher  and  Inver  is  easily  ascertained 


^  NAMES  OF  PLACES.  .  87 

by  a  glance  at  the  map  ;  and  the  peculiar  position  of  the 
localities  that  bear  this  name  explains  their  meaning.  Thus 
Ahemethy  and  Inverary  are  identical;  Aberdeen  is  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Den,  and  Abergavenny  at  the  place  where 
the  Usk  and  the  Gavenny  meet.  Berwick  was  anciently 
Aberwick,  and  Huniber  in  like  manner  Hum  Aber. 

It  is  surmised,  and  not  without  good  reason,  that  the 
word  ^bor  in  Eboricum^  our  York,  is  a  lost  Celtic  word, 
corresponding  to  Aber,  if  not  in  reality  identical  with  it, 
and  still  surviving  in  the  sadly  mutilated  form  of  the  mod- 
em name.  The  name  of  the  town  of  Barmouth,  m  North- 
ern Wales,  was  formed  of  two  Celtic  words,  Aber  and  Man, 
but  as  Celtic  was  gradually  forgotten,  and  with  it  the  mean- 
ing of  the  word  Aber,  the  Man  was  changed  into  Mouth, 
to  designate  still  the  local  position  of  the  place. 

Avon  is  the  Celtic  word  for  river,  and  remains  unchanged 
in  the  case  of  many  streams.  The  English  Avon  is  im- 
mortal, its  namesakes  abound  in  England  and  in  Scotland, 
and  even  in  Ireland  one,  at  least,  has  been  rendered  famous 
by  Spenser,  as 

"  Sweet  Awniduff,  which  of  the  Englishmen 
Is  cal'de  Biackwater." 

The  Celtic  Cam,  meaning  crooked,  has  taken  to  itself  a 
Saxon  mate,  and  thus  formed  Oambridge,  while  the  Camely 
a  crooked  river  of  Cornwall,  has  entered  into  the  name  of 
the  little  village  of  Gamelford.  To  this  ancient  derivation 
Dayton  refers,  in  connection  with  its  devious  course,  when  he 
states  that  "  she  doth  her  proper  course  neglect,  ever  since 

"  the  British  Arthur's  blood 
By  Modred's  murd'rous  hand  was  mingled  with  her  flood." 

The  old  Ched-dar,  hill-stream,  survives  in  like  manner,  in 
the  name  of  the  river  itself,  and  in  the  more  familiar  town, 
in  its  Cheddar  cliffs,  and  famous  Cheddar  cheese. 

Strath  meant  a  valley,  and  has  given  us  Strathclyde ;  and 
Ath,  a  ford,  survives  in  Athlone,  properly  Ath-luain,  the  ford 


88  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

of  St.  Lua ;  and  in  Athleague,  the  ford  of  rocks.  Ard,  which 
means  high,  reappears  in  Ardmore  and  Ardrassan,  and  the 
old  compound,  Ard-dene,  high  wood,  which  has  been  pre- 
served entire  and  unchanged  in  the  town  of  Arden,  in  War- 
wickshire, which  was  first  so  called  from  an  ancient  forest, 
no  doubt  far  more  familiar  to  Shakespeare  than  the  corre- 
sponding name  of  the  Ardennes,  in  Belgium.  Bal,  a  city, 
appears  in  numerous  Welsh  and  Irish  towns.  Den,  a  shel- 
tered region,  has  become  a  thorough  English  word,  and 
hardly  owes  any  longer  allegiance  to  its  own  idiom.  In 
Bangor,  we  read  quite  a  historic  lesson.  It  means  Great 
Circle,  and  derives  its  name  from  the  fact  that  at  the  first 
introduction  of  Christianity  among  the  Britons,  circles  (gor) 
were  formed  for  the  purpose  of  better  organization.  When, 
subsequently,  one  of  these  circles  became  more  numerous 
or  powerful,  it  was  called  a  Great  Circle,  {Ban-  Gor,)  and 
thus  soon  became  the  common  designation  of  a  superior 
monastery  or  congregation.  Most  of  these  names  have 
long  survived  the  language  that  gave  them  birth.  Only  in 
Cornwall  the  latter  lingered  longer.  That  province  had 
its  own  dialect,  long  carefully  preserved,  and  last  used  in 
divine  service  in  Landewednach,  the  southernmost  parish 
of  England,  about  the  year  1680.  One  or  two  generations 
later,  it  was  still  currently  spoken  in  the  region  west  of 
Penzance,  and  the  last  person  who  is  known  to  have  used 
it  exclusively,  jvas  a  woman  called  Polly  Denreath,  who 
died  only  toward  the  end  of  last  century. 

One  of  the  most  thoroughly  Celtic  parts  of  England  is 
the  ancient  Mona  of  Caesar,  now  the  Isle  of  Man,  where  not 
only  the  local  topography  speaks  of  the  Celts,  but  where, 
down  to  the  present  century,  the  local  idiom,  called  Manx, 
a  Celtic  dialect,  was  generally  understood,  and  even  used 
in  the  church  service  of  many  remoter  districts.  A  Manx 
sermon,  we  are  told,  is  now  but  rarely  heard,  and  though 
the  language  is  still  employed  in  some  official  fornmlas  of 
the  Tynewald  or  Ancient  Court,  like  the  "  La  Heine  le 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  89> 

veuU "  of  Parliament,  the  old  idiom  of  the  island  is  very 
nearly  extinct. 

These  local  names  are  all  the  more  important  for  our 
knowledge  of  Celts  and  Celtic,  as  there  are  but  few  other 
traces  of  their  language  left  in  modern  English.  The  yew, 
anciently  spelt  eugh  and  yugh,  is  commonly  considered  as 
still  bearing  its  Celtic  name.  Ewhurst,  near  Basingstroke, 
no  doubt  received  its  name  from  the  number  of  yew-trees, 
of  great  antiquity,  for  which  it  is  famous ;  and  so  did  prob- 
ably Ewridge,  a  hamlet  in  the  parish  of  Colerne,  in  Wilt- 
shire. With  a  few  such  exceptions,  however,  the  number 
of  Celtic  words  in  English  is  very  small,  and  of  little  im- 
portance. This  must  be  mainly  attributed  to  the  fact,  that 
there  existed  no  Celtic  MSS.,  because  the  people  never 
wrote,  and  the  Druids,  as  Caesar  tells  us,  thought  it  improper 
to  commit  their  doctrines  to  writing.  All  their  myths  and 
songs  were  handed  down  orally,  and  by  far  the  larger  part 
of  our  knowledge  of  British  Celts  is  derived  exclusively 
from  tradition.  Wlien  the  Romans  subsequently  con- 
quered the  island,  they  viewed  the  Druids  as  the  props 
and  supports  of  Celtic  nationality,  which  must  be  destroyed 
to  the  very  root.  They  took  their  measures  accordingly, 
and  their  efforts  were  but  too  successful.  Still,  there  are 
some  Celtic  words,  which  have  remained  in  English  mainly 
because  they  represent  purely  Celtic  things,  as  reel,  kilty 
elan,  pibroch,  and  plaid.  Ooat,  cart,  prank,  balderdash,  hap 
(ly),  pert,  and  sham,  have  only  lately  established  their  claim 
to  be  true  Celtic  words. 

Next  came  the  Romans,  and  threw  up  their  earthworks 
and  roads  and  walled  camps,  which  still,  though  long  in 
ruin,  tell  the  tale  of  the  strong  hands  that  raised  them,  and 
to  which,  here  and  there,  a  Latin  name  still  clings.  They 
came,  they  conquered,  and  left  again,  exercising,  after  all,  but 
little  influence  on  our  language  during  their  occupation  of  the 
British  isles.  Hence,  we  find  that  among  local  names,  also, 
there  are  but  few,  which  are  with  certainty  both  Old  Latin 


90  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

and  modern  English.  We  know,  in  fact,  but  three  :  castrunif 
stratum,  and  colonia.  The  first  survived,  perhaps,  in  a  few 
cases, ■  without  any  change  at  all;  it  was,  however,  more 
frequently  added  by  the  Saxons  to  local  names,  in  order  to 
designate  a  Roman  site,  and  these  names  are  very  numer- 
ous. It  remained  caster  in  the  Anglican  and  Danish  dis- 
tricts, whilst  in  the  Saxon  districts  it  changed  into  cester. 
The  ancient  Durohrivae,  on  the  river  New,  thus  survives 
as  Castor  ;  Ancaster  proves  its  origin  by  the  many  Roman 
coins  found  there,  and  Tadcaster,  Doncaster,  the  ancient 
Danum,  and  Lancaster,  on  the  river  Lune,  have  the  same 
origin.  The  Latin  word  was  at  an  early  period  changed 
into  Cester,  as  in  Cirencester  and  Gloucester,  the  ancient 
Glevae  Castrum,  and  in  Exeter,  the  great  city  of  Isca,  which 
changed  its  Roman  name  into  Exan-ceastre,  from  the  river 
Exe.  In  Oxfordshire,  Bicester  and  Alcester  appear  to  be 
Roman  sites,  a  presumption  which,  in  the  case  of  Leicester, 
has  been  amply  proved  by  interesting  remains  of  ancient 
mansions,  and  fine,  tessellated  pavements.  Manceter,  in 
Warwickshire,  formerly  Mandressedum,  has  lost  an  s,  and 
Wroxeter  is  a  violent  contraction  of  Wreahen  Ceaster,  a 
name  derived  from  the  neighboring  Wrekin  Hill.  A  still 
later  development  of  the  Latin  name  is  the  softened  Chester, 
repeated  in  Chesterholm,  the  old  Vindolena,  and  Great  Cites- 
ters,  on  the  site  of  ^sica.  It  has  given  us,  in  like  manner, 
Chichester,  founded  by  Cissa,  the  son  of  Ella,  and  Colchester, 
the  first  Roman  city,  which  was  made  a  Colonia ;  which, 
however,  may  have  taken  its  name  from  the  river  Colne. 
Rochester,  on  the  Medway,  and  great  Manchester,  Silchester, 
whose  walls,  still  to  be  traced  in  the  northern  part  of  Hamp- 
shire, once  included  a  circuit  of  three  miles,  and  Winchester 
—  all  bear  the  impress  of  their  antiquity.  The  latter  cor- 
responds, in  quite  a  striking  manner,  to  the  French  Bicetre  ; 
as  in  Germany  the  city  of  Cassel,  in  Hesse,  represents  the 
ancient  Castellum,  derived  from  the  Latin  castruiyi. 

The  second  Latin  word  of  great  importance  for  our  local 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  91 

names  is  stratum,  which  recalls  to  us  at  once  the  magnifi- 
cent roads  that  traversed  the  island  in  many  directions, 
built,  no  doubt,  partly,  at  least,  by  the  manual  labor  of  our 
British  forefathers,  but  laid  out  by  Roman  engineers  and 
finished  under  Roman  direction  and  control.  Each  of  the 
great  lines  of  roads,  constructed  chiefly,  if  not  exclusively, 
for  the  purpose  of  safe  military  occupation  and  control  of 
the  country,  was  called  a  strata  by  the  Romans  of  the 
declining  empire,  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  invaders  of  Eng- 
land adopted  the  word,  which  closely  resembled  a  Gothic 
word  of  their  own,  as  straet,  adding  it  subsequently  to  many 
places  situated  on  the  old  line  of  the  Roman  road.  A  vil- 
lage so  situated  became  easily  Stratton  or  Stretham,  mean- 
ing Street  Town,  or  Street  Home,  and  if  there  was  a  ford 
near  by,  as  readily  Stratford,  so  that  these  and  similar 
names  oflen  mark  for  long  distances  the  course  of  former 
Roman  roads,  even  where  all  other  traces  have  disappeared. 
Ardwick  le  Street  in  Yorkshire,  Chester  le  Street  in  Dur- 
ham, Stretton,  and  others,  thus  tell  us  of  their  proximity 
to  a  Roman  road.  Portway,  a  name  that  belongs  to  several 
places,  is  in  like  manner  connected  with  the  military  lan- 
guage of  the  Romans.  Cold  Harhor  is  said  to  occur  as  the 
name  of  seventy  places  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  ancient 
lines  of  road,  and  seems  to  have  signified  a  ruined  house 
or  station,  where  travellers  could  find  shelter,  but  nothing 
else,  after  the  manner  of  the  German  Kalte  Herberge. 
It  thus  became  a  Saxon  designation  of  a  Roman  locality, 
while  often  the  idioms  of  the  succeeding  races  mingle  in 
the  same  name.  Thus  it  is  not  a  little  curious  that  in 
Shakespeare's  birthplace,  Stratford  upon  Avon,  we  have  the 
three  successive  masters  of  England  represented  jointly; 
the  Celt,  in  the  ancient  name  of  the  river,  the  Roman,  in 
the  first  part  of  Stratford,  and  the  Saxon,  in  the  second  half. 
Colonia,  the  proud  title  of  many  a  provincial  town 
throughout  the  vast  empire,  survives  here  and  there  in 
local  names,  as  in  the  above-mentioned  Colchester,  where 


92  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

the  ponderous  masonry  of  the  walls  of  the  ancient  city  of 
Camalodunum  shows  to  this  day  how  well  the  Romans 
guarded  against  the  recurrence  of  such  a  calamity  as  was 
sustained  there  by  the  surprised  and  overpowered  soldiers 
of  the  Ninth  Legion,  on  the  revolt  under  Boadicea.  In 
the  North  we  have  Lincoln,  once  the  noble  city  of  Lindum, 
situated  on  a  lofty  hill,  and  commanding  extensive  views. 

Besides  these  three  great  sources  of  modern  names,  we 
find  not  unfrequently  other  traces  of  Roman  greatness,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  great  wall  of  the  Emperor  Hadrian? 
which  stretched  from  the  Solway  Firth  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Tyne.  Traces  of  the  sites  and  names  of  Roman  towns 
abound  here,  beginning  with  those  of  Segedunum,  now 
Wallsend,  near  the  eastern  end  of  the  gigantic  work,  now 
far  more  celebrated  for  its  mineral  treasures  than  the  an- 
cient Segedunum,  the  place  of  which  it  occupies.  Among 
other  local  names,  derived  in  like  manner,  may  be  men- 
tioned Chester  on  the  Wale,  Walltown,  Wallwich  and  Thirl- 
wall,  where  the  river  passes  (drills)  through  the  wall,  a 
locality  from  which,  in  all  probability,  the  name  of  the 
eminent  scholar  was  originally  derived. 

The  familiar  name  of  Wattling  Street,  still  surviving  in 
the  heart  of  the  city  of  London,  is  one  of  the  etymological 
mysteries  which  have  not  yet  been  solved.  It  was  the 
well-known  name  the  Saxons  gave  to  the  great  Roman 
road  that  ran  from  Dover  through  Canterbury  and  Lon- 
don, across  the  island  to  Chester  and  the  coa^t  of  Wales, 
and  remained  one  of  the  principal  public  thoroughfares 
long  after  the  Roman  rule  had  ceased.  The  fact  that  the 
Milky  Way  passed  somewhat  in  the  same  way  across  the 
heavens,  led  the  Anglo-Saxons  to  transfer  the  name  to  the 
stars,  and  even  Chaucer  speaks  of  it  still  thus :  — 

"  So  then,  quoth  he,  cast  up  thine  eye 
Se  yonder,  lo,  the  galaxie 
The  which  men  yclepe  the  Milky  Way, 
For  it  is  white  and  some  parfay 
Ycallen  it  have  Watlinge  Strete." 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  93 

It  is  remarkable  that  no  name  of  the  bridges  survives, 
which  these  magnificent  roads  must  necessarily  have  had 
over  the  rivers  they  crossed.  Undoubted  ruins  of  such 
bridges  have  been  found,  and  the  ancient  names  of  Roman 
towns  or  stations  show  that  they  must  have  been  situated 
near  a  bridge,  but  their  names  have  invariably  become 
Saxon.  Thus  the  ancient  Pontes  on  the  Thames,  near 
Windsor,  survives  only  as  Staines  (stones),  and  the  famous 
Pons  Actii  on  the  Tyne  has  been  altogether  modernized 
into  New  Castle. 

The  derivation  of  Pontefract  and  Ponteland  from  ponty 
is  extremely  doubtful,  so  also  that  of  Bridgeport  from 
partus. 

Traces  of  Roman  legions  survive  here  and  there  in  local 
names,  as  in  Lexdon,  Legionis  Dunum,  and  Gaerloon,  Isca 
Legionum  (?). 

Other  races  followed  in  rapid  succession,  invading  the 
island  on  all  accessible  points,  holding  some  parts  of  the 
coast  for  a  generation  or  two,  and  then  disappearing  again. 
Of  these  only  one,  the  Frisians,  have  left  behind  them 
really  valuable  and  interesting  traces  in  local  names.  They 
came  from  the  country  between  the  Scheldt  and  the  Weser, 
on  both  sides  of  the  river  Ems,  but  also  from  the  islands  on 
the  eastern  coast  of  Denmark.  They  were  so  nearly  re- 
lated, in  race  and  in  language,  to  their  successors,  the  An- 
glo-Saxons, that  Wilfrith,  bishop  of  York,  being  accidentally 
thrown  upon  the  coast  of  Frisia,  could  preach  to  the  people 
he  found  there  the  gospel  of  Christ  in  his  own  native  tongue, 
the  Anglo-Saxon,  and  baptize  not  only  the  princes  but  many 
thousands  of  the  people.  The  Frisians  are  ill-treated  cous- 
ins of  our  English,  and  it  is  hardly  creditable  to  the  latter 
that  they  should  ignore  their  relatives  merely  because  they 
have  not  succeeded  in  maintaining  their  position  among 
the  great  nations.  They  were  once  masters  of  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  German  seaboard,  though  now  they  are  much 
broken  up  and  intermixed  with  other  races.    Of  all  ancient 


94  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

dialects  none  has  a  closer  connection  with  Anglo-Saxon 
than  Old  Frisic  ;  and  of  all  modern  dialects  perhaps  none 
has  such  strong  points  of  resemblance  with  English  as  New 
Frisic.  Thus  on  all  the  Continent  they  alone  use  the  word 
woman  as  we  do  in  English.  Like  all  other  races,  the 
Frisians  also  have  left  their  traces  most  distinctly  in  those 
parts  of  Great  Britain  where  they  dwelt  longest.  There 
is,  to  this  day,  a  remarkable  coincidence  of  local  names  in 
Kent  with  those  of  Frisia,  and  especially  of  Holstein,  be- 
cause this  country  alone,  of  all  the  homes  of  early  invaders, 
has  not  been  in  the  hands  of  foreigners,  and  thus  its  lan- 
guage has  been  left  comparatively  undisturbed.  The  dia- 
lect of  West  Somersetshire  resembles  their  language  more 
than  any  other,  and  their  modern  words  even  correspond 
so  closely  to  our  own  that  some  of  Shakespeare's  plays 
have  been  translated  into  Frisic,  almost  word  for  word. 
They  still  hold  themselves  our  kinsmen,  and  show  the  like- 
ness of  the  two  tongues  in  the  conmion  saying, — 

"  Good  butter  and  good  cheese 
Is  good  English  and  good  Friese." 

With  the  exception,  however,  of  the  diminutive  termina- 
tion kin  which  we  clearly  owe  to  them,  it  is  extremely 
difficult  to  separate  in  modern  English  what  is  due  to  them, 
and  what  to  the  speech  of  the  Angles.  For  these  came 
themselves  from  that  part  of  the  duchy  of  Slesvic,  which  is 
called  Frisia  Minor,  where  the  very  place  is  shown  at  Gun- 
dern,  from  whence  they  embarked,  when  they  went  forth 
finally  to  take  possession  of  their  conquest  in  Britain 
(Westfalia  I.  p.  58).  It  must  also  be  borne  in  mind  that 
long  before  the  Romans  finally  retired  from  the  island  a 
considerable  element  of  Saxon  had  already  obtained  pos- 
session of  the  southeast  coast,  and  that  even  Caesar  men- 
tions already  the  great  extent  of  German  immigration  into 
England.  These  settlements  must  necessarily  have  affected 
the  nomenclature  of  these  parts  of  the  island,  and  it  is  fair 
to  presume  that  many,  if  not  most,  of  the  Saxon  names  are 
at  least  as  old  as  the  time  of  Alfred. 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  95 

More  remarkable  is  the  influence  exercised  on  local 
names  by  the  conquerors  who  next  can^e  to  carve  out  for 
themselves  a  new  kingdom  in  England.  They  formed  part 
of  that  wonderful  race  of  Scandinavians,  whose  ships  made 
their  way  into  every  creek  and  inlet  in  the  British  islands 
and  in  Northern  France,  and  who  first  landed  as  pirates, 
and  then  seized  as  conquerors,  the  sway  of  hapless  Sicily, 
Normandy,  and  England.  In  the  latter  country  they  were 
very  generally  designated  simply  as  Danes,  and  first  appear 
under  the  indefinite  name  of  ^' Pagani,  Normanni,  sive 
Dani,^'  in  Asser's  "  Life  of  Alfred."  Their  proper  name, 
however,  was  Vikings,  not  as  is  very  generally  believed  from 
any  assumption  of  the  title  of  king,  with  which  the  name 
has  nothing  to  do,  but  from  the  word  wic  or  vik,  which 
meant  in  their  own  language  a  place  by  the  sea,  and  the 
patronymic  ing.  From  the  days  of  Egbert  to  those  of 
the  Conquest,  the  annals  of  England  are  fast  bound  to  the 
history  of  these  Norsemen  and  to  their  northern  kingdoms. 
Even  before  the  time  of  Alfred  these  daring  invaders  had 
settled  themselves  firmly  down  in  Northumberland,  and 
with  that  great  monarch  began  the  fatal  system  of  buying 
off  their  hostility  by  means  of  yielding  up  to  them  large 
portions  of  Saxon  soil.  One  sovereign  after  another  fol- 
lowed this  unfortunate  and  unwise  policy,  down  to  Ethelred 
the  Unready,  who  brought  the  greatest  misfortune  of  all 
upon  his  ill-fated  kingdom.  After  having  in  vain  tried  to 
buy  them  off,  first  with  ten  thousand,  and  then  with  thirty 
thousand  pounds  weight  of  gold,  he  attempted  in  an  evil 
hour  the  midnight  massacre  of  St.  Boice's  day  in  1002,  and 
thus  delivered  England  into  the  hands  of  the  infuriated 
Danes.  Then  followed  the  days  of  his  flight  to  France, 
and  the  subjugation  of  England  by  Canute  the  Great,  and 
Sueno  the  Blessed,  when  the  laws  of  the  Danes,  the  Dane- 
lag,  became  paramount  in  England.  Thus  it  remained, 
even  afler  the  land  was  reconquered  by  the  Saxons,  and  at 
the  time  of  the  Conquest  England  was  still  more  than  half 


96  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Scandinavian.  Besides  the  great  district  of  Northumber- 
land, which  reached  far  across  the  border  into  Scotland  and 
the  province  of  Anglia,  the  nationality  reached  as  far  south 
as  Derby  and  Rugby,  in  the  very  heart  of  Mercia,  and  all 
over  the  land  the  Saxon  language  was  "  laced  and  patched  *' 
with  northern  words  and  idioms. 

Their  language  gave,  besides,  a  general  and  permanent 
coloring  to  our  English,  which  now  mainly  shows  in  the 
provincial  dialects  of  the  North,  and  in  local  names  along 
the  coast  and  the  great  river-courses,  reminding  us  thus 
constantly  that  England  owes  to  the  Danes,  and  not  to  the 
Saxons,  its  fondness  for  the  sea  and  its  ability  to  "  rule  the 
waves."  The  people,  also,  with  their  darker  hair,  smaller 
bones,  and  sterner  countenance,  betray  their  descent  from  a 
northern  race.  This  applies  especially  to  Northumberland 
and  the  North  and  West  Eiding  of  Yorkshire,  with  its 
famous  old  metrical  romance  of  Havelok  the  Dane,  from 
which  we  have  derived  a  name  that  has  been  made  once 
more  in  our  day  immortal  by  a  son  of  England,  whose 
heroic  deeds  have  been  recounted  wherever  the  English 
tongue  is  spoken. 

Here  former  Anglian  or  Saxon  occupants  had  perished 
in  war,  or  had  been  expelled  from  their  native  seats,  unless 
they  submitted  to  the  invaders.  Among  the  different  forms 
of  government  adopted  in  this  large  Scandinavian  popula- 
tion, were  not  only  the  usual  power  of  kings  and  jarls,  but 
also  the  peculiar  one  known  as  the  Confederation  of  the 
Five  Burghs,  namely,  Lincoln,  Leicester,  Derby,  Notting- 
ham, and  Stamford,  with  which  York  and  Chester  commonly 
acted  in  concert.  It  was  here,  of  course,  that  the  Dene- 
laga  had  its  fullest  sway,  and  the  division  of  the  whole  of 
England  into  the  Dene-laga,  Myrcna-laga,  and  T^e«^*Seaa7^a- 
laga^  which  designated  the  several  districts  under  Danish, 
Mercian,  and  Saxon  law,  became  of  such  importance  that 
it  continued  till  long  after  the  Norman  Conquest.  In  the 
laws  published  under  Henry  I.,  (1109-1135,)  "  the  province 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  97 

of  the  Danes*"  is  especially  mentioned  as  one  of  the  three 
parts  of  England.  They  were,  however,  by  no  means  con- 
fined to  these  districts,  for  we  find,  e.  g.,  that  the  Orkneys 
as  well  as  Shetland  are  in  name,  manners,  and  language 
true  Norse.  Sodor  reminds  us  yet  of  the  Danish  for 
Souther,  and  Sutherland  itself  was  so  called  because  this 
northernmost  county  of  Scotland  was  nevertheless  to  the 
south  of  Norway. 

As  would  naturally  be  expected,  the  Danes  have  left 
behind  them  a  vast  number  of  names  of  places  which  they 
bestowed,  and  which  are  still  preserved.  Of  these  the  most 
important  and  the  most  frequent  are  hy,  meaning  originally 
a  farm,  and  then  a  village  or  town ;  thorpe,  a  hamlet ; 
thwaite^  a  piece  of  cleared  land ;  ey,  an  isle,  together  with 
a  few  similar  endings  like  holmes  top,  heck,  ness,  &c.  The 
most  frequent  of  these  is  by,  which  forms  at  least  one  fourth 
of  all  the  names  of  towns  in  Lincolnshire.  The  Danes 
were  fond  of  adding  it  to  the  names  of  their  gods,  and  thus 
made  Thoreshy  and  Baldershy,  justifying  the  poet  when  he 
sings  of  the  Northmen,  that  they  "  gave  their  gods  the  land 
they  won."  Other  Danish  names  of  the  same  kind  make 
it,  however,  plain  that  these  were  mere  reminiscences  of 
home,  and  that  Christianity  was  the  religion  of  the  people 
when  they  gave  these  names.  Kirhhy-\m^Qvd2\e  and  Kirkhy- 
moorside,  Kirkby  in  Lonsdale  and  Orossby  show  that  long 
since  the  Christian  bishop  had  driven  out  the  heathen 
priest,  and  the  Christian  Church  and  Cross  had  succeeded 
to  the  pagan  altar.  Where  neither  God  nor  Church  stood 
sponsor,  the  name  of  the  owner  of  the  place  served  instead, 
and  thus  were  formed  Rolleshy  (Rolf  s-by),  Ormshy  (Gorm's- 
by),  Grimsby,  (whose  vessels,  when  they  enter  a  Danish 
port,  can  even  now  claim  the  exemptions  derived  from  the 
Danish  founder,)  Haconby,  Swainsby,  Ingersby  and  Osgodby. 
Even  persons  who  were  not  Danes  supplied  occasionally 
their  names  to  the  place,  as  in  Saxby,  Frankby,  Scotby,  and 
Flemingby,  which  must  at  least  have  been  situated  near 
7 


98  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

large  Danish  settlements,  so  that  the  final  hy  could  be  fa- 
miliar to  the  people  around.  Nor  did  the  favorite  termina- 
tion disdain  to  enter  into  an  alliance  .with  common  nouns ; 
thus  Derweniby^  Appleby,  and  Netherby,  are  easily  understood, 
and  Coningshy  is  the  Danish  form  of  our  English  Cun- 
ningham, meaning  literally  King's  Home.  J^igby  is  Dike 
Town,  and  the  only  southern  place  thus  named  is  old 
Rokeby,  now  famous  Rugby.  The  spelling  is  Anglicized  in 
Battersbee,  Ashbee,  and  Hornsbee,  The  "  Rape  of  Bramber  " 
in  Sussex  preserves  to  this  day  the  memory  of  the  old  Ice- 
landic division  of  lands  by  Hreppar,  from  which  the  Danish 
word  rehe  is  derived,  meaning  to  measure,  from  the  in- 
strument employed,  a  rep  (rope),  —  very  much  as  we  speak 
in  modern  English  of  a  "  hide "  of  land,  from  its  being 
measured  by  a  thong. 

Our  word  By-Jaw  owes  its  origin  to  the  same  Danish 
word  by.  The  common  error  which  regards  a  by-law  as 
one  of  inferior  importance,  arises  from  a  confusion  in  the 
mind  of  the  people,  produced  by  the  idea  which  we  connect 
with  the  preposition  by.  The  Danes,  on  the  contrary,  used 
the  word  to  designate  the  laws  of  byes  or  towns,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  general  laws  of  the  kingdom.  It  may 
be  mentioned  in  this  connection,  that  a  few  such  Danish 
names  bear  record  of  political  changes  in  the  state  of  the 
kingdom,  by  their  own  verbal  changes.  Thus  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  town  of  Streoneshalch  was  rebaptized  by  the  Danes 
as  Whitby,  the  White  Town,  and  Northwearthig  as  Derby  or 
Deer  Town,  in  analogy  with  Derwent  and  Deerhurst. 

Thorpe  has  in  like  manner  furnished  a  large  number  of 
local  names  in  those  districts  which  were  most  frequented 
by  the  Danes.  Ullesthorpe  reminds  us  again  of  a  Scan- 
dinavian deity,  whilst  Bassingthorpe  and  Shillingthorpe  are 
probably  the  only  two  out  of  all  the  names  in  Lincolnshire, 
compounded  with  thorpe,  which  are  derived  from  family 
names.     Bishopthorpe  and  Nunthorpe  tell  their  own  tale. 

How  very  important  these  names  may  be  for  historical 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  99 

researches,  appears  strikingly  in  the  Isle  of  Man,  where 
curiously  enough,  the  names  which  denote  places  of  Chris- 
tian worship  are  all  of  Norwegian  origin,  and  thus  clearly 
prove  the  late  date  up  to  which  heathenism  must  have  pre- 
vailed there. 

The  word  ea  for  our  Island,  is  not  only  Danish  but  also 
Frisic,  and  may,  therefore,  occasionally  belong  to  the  latter 
language.  It  is  at  least  as  suggestive  of  historic  changes 
as  hy.  Thus  when  the  island  of  Mona,  of  classic  an- 
tiquity, which  had  already  once  changed  its  British  name 
into  the  Saxon  Maenige  or  island  of  Maen,  was  overrun 
by  king  Egbert,  it  was  called  Angles-ey,  the  Englishman's 
island,  and  has  ever  since  retained  its  name  as  Anglesea. 
The  older  Celtic  name  has,  however,  not  entirely  dis- 
appeared with  the  Saxon  conquest,  but  survives  in  the 
Menai  Hundred,  the  Menai  Strait,  and  Menai  Bridge,  and 
in  the  name  of  the  parish  Penmon,  the  Head  of  Mon. 
Sheppy  and  Mersey  are,  from  of  old,  the  islands  of  Sheep,  and 
of  the  Mere  or  sea.  Roodey,  the  name  of  a  meadow  near 
Chester,  now  used  as  a  race-course,  was  originally  the  island 
of  the  Holy  Rood  or  Cross,  lying  as  it  did  between  the 
walls  of  the  ancient  town  and  the  banks  of  the  river  Dee. 
Bardsey  was  called  the  Bards'  island,  as  being  the  last 
retreat  of  "Welsh  bards.  My  has  its  name  of  eel-island 
from  the  abundance  of  that  fish  in  the  neighborhood, 
100,000  of  which  were  annually  paid  to  the  lord  of  the  manor 
as  rent ;  Elmore  and  Ellesmere  are  said  to  have  the  same 
derivation.  Jersey,  however,  with  its  apparent  identity  with 
these  names,  ought  to  be  a  warning  to  overhasty  etymolo- 
gists, as  it  is  derived  from  Caesarea  and  has  nothing  to  do 
with  Dane  or  Saxon. 

Besides  these  names  of  localities  the  Danes  have  given 
us  also  some  words  for  mere  features  of  landscape,  as  hiUow, 
gar  and  elding.  Gil  is  from  the  old  Norse,  and  means  a  small 
ravine ;  it  enters  into  the  formation  of  the  proper  names 
of  Gilbert  and  Gilmore  ;  whilst /cwse,  a  waterfall,  has  helped 


100  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

to  form  the  famous  name  of  Wilherforce.  A  hungry  sand- 
piper is  called  knot  from  king  Canute,  as  we  find  in  Camden's 
"  Britannia,"  (p.  971,)  and  as  Drayton's  "  Polyolbion  "  con- 
firms it  in  these  lines .  — 

"  The  knot  that  called  was  Canutus'  bird  of  old, 
Of  that  great  king  of  Danes  his  name  that  still  doth  hold, 
His  appetite  to  please  that  far  and  near  was  sought 
For  him,  as  some  have  said,  from  Denmark  hither  brought." 

As  Canute  still  lives  in  Knutsford,  the  great  Hacon  may 
possibly  survive  in  Hacon's  island.  Hackney,  and  the  chil- 
dren of  God,  Aesbjorn,  in  our  Osborne.  In  Danish  times, 
moreover,  their  own  northern  habit  of  counting  not  by  days 
but  by  nights,  from  sunset  to  sunset,  prevailed  in  England, 
an  evidence  of  which  survives  in  our  sennight,  fortnight 
and  Twelfth  Night.  Among  less  frequent  evidences  of 
this  Danish  influence  may  be  mentioned  occasional  allu- 
sions to  the  national  standard,  the  Raven,  which  occur  in 
some  local  names.  Thus  in  Ravenhill,  in  the  North  Riding 
of  York,  which  claims  to  be  the  place  on  which  the  Danes 
planted  the  Reafn  (raven)  on  landing  under  Inguar  in 
876,  whilst  in  other  places  it  may  simply  recall  the  worship 
of  Odin,  on  whom  the  raven  attended,  as  the  eagle  on 
Jupiter.  Hence  names  like  Havenstone,  Ravensioorth,  and 
Ravenspur,  which  has  since  been  swallowed  up  by  the  sea, 
like  the  master  of  Ravenswood  himself. 

As  the  Devil  plays  an  important  part  in  English  local 
names,  calling  bridges,  caves,  and  causeways  after  his  name, 
so  the  Danes  also  have  bequeathed  to  us  the  name  of  at 
least  one  evil  spirit,  a  wild  and  rough  being  who  played  the 
part  of  Satyr  or  Faun  in  their  gloomy  mythology.  The 
Old  Norse  called  him  Scratte,  and  hence  Scratby  and 
Scratta,  on  the  borders  of  Derbyshire,  which  is  still  so 
firmly  believed  to  be  haunted  that  no  house  is  built  there. 
The  sprite  survives  even  in  America  as  Old  Scratch,  a  polite 
designation  for  the  Devil,  taken  from  Scandinavian  mythol- 
ogy, as  Old  Nick  is  for  the  same  purpose  borrowed  from 
the  water  sprite  of  Old-High  German. 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  101 

A  much  more  important  relic,  however,  of  Danish  man- 
ners and  customs  which  survives  in  our  local  names,  is 
found  in  the  word  thing.  This  was  derived  from  the  name 
the  Danes  gave  to  the  assemblies  which  they  held,  in  com- 
mon with  all  Scandinavians  and  Germans,  in  the  open  air, 
and  in  some  place  of  peculiar  sanctity.  It  survives  to  this 
day  in  the  Scandinavian  Storthing,  the  Great  Court  or 
National  Assembly.  It  is  thus  that  Thingwall  in  Cheshire 
obtained  its  name,  from  being  a  place  of  meeting  of  the 
Thing ;  so  also  are  formed  the  names  of  Dingwall,  in  the 
north  of  Scotland,  Tingwall  in  the  Shetland  Islands,  and 
the  slightly  modified  Tynewald  in  the  Isle  of  Man.  Some 
of  the  petty  courts  of  this  kind,  moreover,  seem  not  to  have 
been  held  in  the  open  air,  like  the  larger  assemblies,  but  in 
the  house,  and  hence  were  known  under  the  name  of  Hust- 
ings. Such  a  judicial  tribunal  met  in  the  cities  of  York 
and  Lincoln,  in  a  few  smaller  places,  and  in  London,  where 
it  has  been  preserved  down  to  our  own  times.  It  has  been 
suggested,  and  not  without  great  plausibility,  by  the  great 
Danish  scholar,  Warsaae,  that  traces  of  these  Things  may 
be  found  in  the  triple  division  of  Yorkshire  and  Lincoln- 
shire into  Ridings.  Whilst  the  word  is  generally  traced 
back  to  the  Saxon  thrithings  or  thirdlings,  it  must  not  be 
overlooked  that  in  Scandinavia  the  division  of  provinces 
into  thirds,  tredinger,  is  quite  common  and  corresponds 
exactly  to  the  North  English  trithing. 

Every  now  and  then  some  new  Norse  word  makes  its 
appearance  in  English  writers,  but  few  have  become  perma- 
nently at  home  there.  Among  the  latter  are  some  which 
the  English  soldiers  in  the  Thirty  Years'  War  learnt  from 
their  comrades,  whilst  they  served  under  the  great  Swede, 
Gustavus  Adolphus.  Thus  we  obtained  plunder  and  life- 
guard, which  comes,  not  from  the  English  word  life,  but 
from  the  Swedish  lif,  (German  leih^  meaning  body,  and 
thus  is  identical  with  body-guard.  Furlough  also  was 
introduced  at  the   same    time    from   the    Swedish  forlof, 


102  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

spelt  sometimes  furloofe.  Among  English  words  recently 
claimed  by  Mr.  Coleridge  for  the  Danish  or  Norse  we  find 
bait^  Jrray^  dish,  dock,  dwell,  Jiimsy,  jiing,  gust,  ransack,  rap 
and  whim. 

A  great  change  was  produced  in  British  nomenclatm"e, 
and  hence,  in  English  names  generally,  when  the  Saxons 
came  into  the  land.  A  conquering  people,  who  subdue  an 
indigenous  population  and  reduce  them  to  serfdom,  catch 
only  with  an  ill-will  and  great  reluctance,  the  names  of 
objects  around  them.  They  repeat  them  as  well  as  they 
can,  and  retain  them  more  from  haughty  indolence  than 
from  choice.  But  when  they  form  themselves  new  objects 
of  the  kind,  when  they  make  an  inclosure  or  erect  a  for- 
tress, they  take  the  elements  of  the  new  name,  not  from 
the  language  of  the  conquered  land  but  from  their  own. 
This  was  the  case  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  idiom,  for  the  set- 
tlers who  spoke  it  gained  possession,  not  of  a  sudden,  in 
one  day,  as  the  Normans  did  afterwards,  but  step  by  step, 
during  an  obstinate  conflict  which  lasted  for  centuries. 
Besides,  they  remained  long  without  any  centralization  of 
power,  and  exterminated  or  expelled  a  large  proportion  of 
the  British  race  before  they  themselves  united  under  a 
common  ruler.  In  this  fierce  conflict  they  rooted  out  the 
British  language,  as  well  as  the  British  people,  and  drove 
both  to  the  extremities  of  the  island,  there  to  linger  and 
to  pine  away  in  helpless  isolation.  Hence  it  is  that  the 
Saxons  have  left  by  far  the  strongest  impress  of  all  on  the 
land  and  its  names. 

The  race  itself  shows  its  blood  to  this  day  in  those  por- 
tions of  England  where  their  settlements  were  most  numer- 
ous ;  in  the  midland  counties,  in  inland  dales,  in  all  remoter 
regions,  their  large  frame,  muscular  and  massive  now  as 
of  old,  their  fair  hair  and  blue  eyes,  are  easily  recognized. 
The  ancient  blood  is  heard  in  the  broad,  loud  speech  of 
these  men,  and  they  can  read  their  title  clearly  in  the  names 
of  all  leading  localities. 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  103 

"  In  ford,  in  ham,  in  ley,  and  tun 
TJie  most  of  English  surnames  run," 

says  an  old  cl,itty,  and  recent  researches  have  confirmed  the 
fact  that  these  syllables  belong  to  one  fourth  of  all  local 
names  mentioned  in  Saxon  charters.  Ford  is,  of  course, 
the  present  word  of  the  same  meaning,  but  it  was  by  so 
much  more  common  then,  as  fords  were  more  numerous 
than  bridges.  It  is  now  mostly  attached  in  local  names  to 
common  words,  as  in  Bradford,  the  broad  ford ;  in  Herford, 
the  ford  fit  for  an  army ;  and  in  Oxford,  not  the  ford  for 
oxen,  but  the  ford  over  the  river  Ouse.  At  other  times  it 
is  added  to  the  names  of  great  leaders,  who  have  made  cer- 
tain fords  historical,  as  in  the  case  of  Uffa,  in  Suffolk,  from 
whom  Ufford  bears  its  name ;  and  in  Knutsford,  from  Canute, 
the  Dane.  Bridgford,  in  Nottinghamshire,  combines  the 
new  and  the  old  regime.  Ham  is  our  modern  home,  the 
word  so  peculiarly  dear  to  all  Saxon  hearts,  because  it  is 
really  the  most  sacred,  the  most  intimately  felt,  of  all  the 
words  by  which  the  dwelling  of  man  is  distinguished.  By 
its  historic  associations,  it  gains,  in  local  names,  an  addi- 
tional hold  upon  our  sympathies.  Thus  the  memory  of 
the  first  Christian  Queen  of  England,  Ebba,  lives  still  in 
Ebba's  home,  now  Epsom  ;  nor  is  it  quite  unimportant  that 
in  the' South  of  England  it  should  always  have  its  full  form, 
home,  whilst  the  sterner  North  has  as  invariably  shortened 
it  into  ham.  St.  Keyna,  a  saint  of  whom  otherwise  few 
would  know,  has  left  his  memory  in  Keynsham  ;  and  Horsa, 
the  companion  of  Hengist,  protests,  by  his  town  of  Horsham, 
against  being  treated  as  a  simple  banner,  with  a  horse  for 
its  emblem.  Farnham  still  abounds  in  ferns ;  and  Denham 
lies  in  a  snug  and  cozy  den  ;  Langham  and  Higham,  Shore- 
ham  and  Cohham,  explain  themselves,  while  the  diminutive 
hamlet  applies  with  peculiar  appropriateness  to  the  well- 
named  Waltham,  the  home  in  the  woods  or  the  weald. 
Hampden  and  Hampton  have  admitted  an  intruding  p, 
which  loves  to  slip  in  between  labials  and  dentals;  and 


104  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

the  State  of  New  York  boasts  in  its  great  city  of  the  Goat's 
home,  Gotham,  of  the  father  of  modern  hmnbugs,  Bamum, 
whose  home  is  not  a  barn,  but  an  Eastern  palace. 

It  is  very  evident,  from  many  of  the  examples  mentioned, 
that  our  Anglo-Saxon  fathers  were  peculiarly  fond  of  con- 
necting their  family  names  with  their  dwelling-places. 
They  remind  us  uncomfortably  of  the  words  of  the  Psalm- 
ist:—  "Their  inward  thought  is,  that  their  houses  shall 
continue  for  ever,  and  their  dwelling  places  to  all  genera- 
tions ;  they  call  their  lands  after  their  own  names."  (Ps. 
xlix.  11.)  But  the  same  habit,  still  so  characteristic  of  the 
Saxon  race  at  home  and  abroad,  has  prevailed  in  most  ages 
and  in  most  countries  of  the  world.  Great  kings  and  con- 
querors applied  their  name  to  countries  and  cities  as  we 
do  to  farms  and  villas.  Philip  of  Macedon  gave  his  to 
Philippi,  so  famous  in  the  history  of  Brutus  and  Cassius, 
and  dearer  to  us  all,  because  here  tidings  of  the  Gospel 
seem  first  to  have  been  received  with  gladness  by  European 
listeners.  Alexander  and  Antiochus  left  behind  them  Alex- 
andria and  Antioch.  The  Caesars  are  remembered  by  name 
in  Autun,  once  Augustodunum,  Saragossa  (Caesarea  Au- 
gusta), Adrianople,  and  Chnstantinople.  In  the  United  States 
the  name  of  the  founder  of  the  Republic  was  bestowed 
upon  the  capital  city,  Washington,  and  the  name  of  the 
British  Queen  has  been  given  to  Victoria,  in  her  great  Aus- 
tralian empire.  These  examples  of  the  rulers  of  the  world 
have  been  very  generally  followed  by  the  Dei  Mnores,  and 
England,  especially,  abounds  with  local  names  of  this  nat- 
ure. These  designations  are  generally  recognized  by  their 
termination  in  -ing  or  -ling,  and  are  not  unfrequently  of 
venerable  antiquity.  It  has  been  ascertained  that  the 
names  of  places  like  Billing,  Tarring,  Sterling,  Twining, 
and  Basing,  with  their  derivatives,  were  originally  settle- 
ments of  several  members  of  the  same  family.  In  some 
instances,  it  is  well  known,  this  connection  between  a  place 
and  its  ancient  owner  has  never  been  severed  through  all 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  105 

the  intervening  centuries,  as  in  High  Legh,  in  Cheshire, 
which  has  been  inhabited  from  time  immemorial  by  branches 
of  the  same  old  family.  Even  Buckingham,  so  long  called 
the  Home  of  the  Beeches,  is  no  longer  allowed  its  poetical 
origin,  but  traced  back  to  an  ancient  family  of  Bucks  and 
Buckings,  from  whose  residence  the  name  is  said  to  have 
been  transferred  to  the  surrounding  shire. 

The  sweet  name  of  Leigh  is  the  most  recent  and  fullest 
form  of  the  Saxon  lea  or  ley,  which  still  survives  unchanged 
in  words  familiar  to  every  English  farmer  —  the  pasture 
ley,  the  clover  lea,  and  even  the  sainfoin  lea.  Local  names 
in  ley  abound  in  all  Saxon  regions,  especially  in  Cheshire, 
where  there  are  "  as  many  Leighs  as  fleas,"  as  the  proverb 
bluntly  says.  Offley,  near  Hitchley,  recalls  the  great  OfFa, 
king  of  Essex ;  Netley,  so  little  creditable  to  farmers  who 
generally  abhor  nettles,  makes  amends  by  its  beautiful 
abbey,  and  Berkley  conjures  up  before  the  mind's  eye  fair 
fields  surrounded  by  birches. 

Of  all  Saxon  names,  however,  those  that  denote  an  in- 
closure  are  by  far  the  most  numerous.  This  appears  very 
natural  when  it  is  borne  in  mind  that  for  more  than  a 
thousand  years  England  has  been  known  abroad  as  the 
land  of  inclosures  of  well-protected  property.  Hence  the 
numerous  words  the  English  use  to  denote  something 
hedged  or  walled  in  or  inclosed,  arising  from  the  love  of 
privacy  and  the  exclusiveness  of  the  English  character. 
Those  constantly  recurring  terminations,  ton,  ham,  worth, 
fold,  parJc,  hurgh,  all  convey  this  one  prominent  notion  of 
inclosure  and  protection. 

Tun  is,  of  this  class,  again  by  far  the  most  frequent,  be- 
cause its  meaning  adapts  itself  most  readily  to  a  great 
variety  of  habitations.  Originally  derived  from  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  verb,  tynan,  which  meant  simply  to  close  or  inclose, 
it  was  soon  adapted  to  various  purposes,  now  helping  to 
count,  when  as  ten,  it  meant  the  closed  hands,  and  then  as 
tyning,  an  inclosure,  giving  a  name  to  a  farm  which  still 


106  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

survives  in  many  counties.  Its  use  became  all  the  more 
general,  as  the  Celts  had  already,  a  fact  little  known  among 
us,  those  regular  and  beautiful  hedgerows,  which  are  so 
striking  a  feature  in  English  landscapes.  These  the  Saxons 
readily  adopted,  giving  the  name  of  tun  to  every  regularly 
hedged  in,  or  fenced  in,  settlement,  from  whence  it  came 
finally  to  designate  a  town.  This  is  well  illustrated  in 
Wickliffe's  translation  of  the  Bible,  where  the  invited  guest 
excuses  himself  with  the  words,  "  I  have  bought  a  toivn^ 
and  I  have  nede  to  go  out  and  se  it,"  (St.  Luke  xiv.  18,) 
and  in  the  reference  to  it :  "  But  they  dispisiden  and 
wenten  forth,  oon  to  his  town,  another  to  his  merchandize." 
(St.  Matt.  xxii.  5.)  In  both  places,  town  is  used  for  the 
modern  farm,  whilst  the  word  wyrt-tun,  (St.  Luke  xiii. 
19,)  is  employed  for  "garden  of  herbs."  Its  latest  and 
most  peculiar  meaning  is  found  in  tunnel,  as  an  inclosed 
and  covered  way.  Tunhridge  is  one  of  the  few  names  in 
which  its  ancient  form  is  fully  preserved  ;  generally  it  has 
been  either  lengthened  into  town  and  toun,  as  in  Hopetoun, 
or  shortened  into  ton,  as  in  Stratton,  Leighton  and  Leaming- 
ton. Acton,  in  Middlesex,  requires  the  aid  of  its  neighbor- 
hood abounding  in  oaks,  and  of  its  once  noble  "  Old  Oak 
Common,"  as  part  of  the  parish  is  still  called,  to  remind  us 
in  its  reduced  form  of  the  original  Oaktown.  Almost 
every  county,  however,  has  its  Norton  (North),  Sutton 
(South),  and  its  Newton.  Local  names,  like  the  last  men- 
tioned, were  readily  transferred  to  men,  and  thus  we  see  in 
Milton  the  mill,  in  Burton  and  Warburion  the  burg,  in  Wal- 
ton the  wall,  and  in  Wotton  the  wold,  in  Staunton  the  stone, 
and  the  moor  in  Morton. 

Closely  connected  with  this  word,  and  yet  different  in 
origin  and  meaning,  is  our  dun,  and  its  many  forms,  all 
derived  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  dun,  an  eminence  stretching 
out  in  a  gentle  slope,  and  hence  applied  to  the  sea-shore 
sands  as  downs.  It  is  the  same  as  the  dunes  of  the  Conti- 
nent, and  the  first  part  of  famous  Dunquerque,  the  French- 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  107 

ified  Kirk  on  the  Downs.  We  use  it  likewise  in  our  South 
Downs,  in  Landsdowne,  Huntingdon,  and  Farringdon.  The 
Scotch  prefer  placing  it  first,  hence  they  say  Dunbar,  Dun- 
keM,  Dunrohin  and  Dumbarton,  Its  shortest  form  appears 
in  Maiden  and  Hampden. 

Such  are  some  of  the  more  prominent  local  names  which 
have  come  down  to  us  directly  from  our  Saxon  fathers. 
There  is  only  one  other  of  almost  equal  frequency,  that  of 
wic  or  wich,  which,  however,  is  not  found  in  German,  but 
exists  only  in  old  English  and  Frisic,  so  that  it  ought  per- 
haps to  be  more  properly  credited  to  the  latter.  The  Ice- 
landic and  Swedish  also  have  wik,  and  etymologists  have 
been  fond  of  tracing  its  connection  with  the  Latin  vicus  and 
the  Greek  oTkc?.  Lord  Coke  tells  us,  that  it  means  a  place 
on  the  sea-shore  or  on  the  banks  of  a  river,  and  generally 
this  definition  is  justified  by  the  local  position  of  places  that 
bear  such  names.  Alnewich,  pronounced  Annick,  lies  on 
the  banks  of  the  Alne,  and  Berwick  is  named  after  the  Celtic 
Aber.  Kerwick,  Warwick,  and  Sedgwick,  all  remind  us,  by 
their  hard  final  letter,  of  North  of  England  speech,  whilst  in 
southern  counties  the  softer  ivich  prevails,  as  in  Sandwich, 
Greenwich,  Ipswich,  Droitwich  and  Harwich. 

Careful  researches  have  led  to  the  discovery  that  the 
inland  wicks  are  generally  of  Saxon  origin,  while  those  on 
the  coast  are  as  constantly  derived  from  stations  used  by 
the  sea  rovers  of  Scandinavia.  Those  inland  towns,  how- 
ever, which  end  in  wich,  may  have  less  to  do  with  the 
Anglo-Saxon  wic,  than  with  the  Norse  vik ;  for  they  are 
all  noted  for  the  production  of  salt,  which  was  formerly 
obtained  by  evaporating  salt  water  in  shallow  pans,  called 
wyches.  Hence  a  place  for  making  salt  came  very  nat- 
urally to  be  called  a  wych-house,  and  Nantwich  and  Dort- 
wich,  and  other  places  where  rocksalt  was  found,  took  their 
names  from  such  wych-houses,  around  which  they  were 
built.     Hence  Drayton  says :  — 

"  The  bracky  fountains  are  those  two  renowned  wythes, 
The  Nantwich  and  the  North"  (Norwich). 


108  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

The  first  part  of  Nantwich  is  still  pure  Celtic,  and  the 
same  which  forms  the  French  names  Nantes,  Nanteuil,  and 
Nanterre,  which  thus  preserve,  in  name  at  least,  the  old 
family  connection  long  after  every  other  trace  of  it  has 
disappeared. 

The  ancient  name  of  hurgf  so  frequent  in  all  Germanic 
countries,  is  of  course  not  wanting  in  England.  It  assumes 
there  under  varied  circumstances  varied  names,  changing 
from  the  full  Scarborough  to  the  shortened  Edinhoro%  and 
occasionally  appearing  as  bury  in  Salisbury  and  other  names. 
Aldborough,  near  York,  corresponds  thus,  in  its  meaning  of 
Old  Town,  to  the  Palaeocastro  and  Castelvecchio,  which 
throughout  modern  Greece,  Asia  Minor,  and  the  islands  of 
the  ^gean  Sea,  are  so  generally  applied  to  any  ancient 
site.  Brought  in  Westmoreland,  has  retained  its  simple, 
original  meaning,  and  the  same  root  prevails,  but  slightly 
altered,  in  the  more  familiar  Brougham  (Burgham). 

There  are,  finally,  numerous  local  names  derived  from 
proper  names  of  the  Anglo-Saxons.  We  need  not  remind 
even  the  general  reader  of  the  Saxon  element  in  Essex,  Wes- 
sex,  Sussex,  and  Middlesex,  or  of  the  many  Jutish  designations 
lefl  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  on  the  opposite  coast  of 
Hampshire.  The  Angle's  folk  survive  clearly  enough,  to 
the  North  and  to  the  South,  in  Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  and 
became  finally  sufficiently  powerful  to  impart  their  name  to 
the  whole  land  under  the  national  denomination  of  Angle- 
land  or  England.  But  individuals  also  made  their  name 
thus  immortal.  Thus,  to  mention  but  one  example,  the 
memory  of  the  great  and  pious  Ella  survives  in  this  manner 
in  the  parishes  of  Ellakirk  and  EUaburn,  in  the  townships 
of  Ella  East,  Ella  West,  and  Ellerbech,  and  in  the  chapelry 
of  Ellard,  all  in  Yorkshire. 

The  Norman  French,  who  were  the  next  masters  of 
England,  have  lefl  us  comparatively  few  names.  This  is 
mainly  due  to  the  fact,  that  they  by  no  means  conquered 
the  Anglo-Saxon.    It  is  true  the  language  of  the  invaded 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  109 

kingdom  fled  to  the  open  country,  to  the  fields  and  the 
woods,  but  there  it  stubbornly  maintained  its  ground,  vul- 
gar but  strong,  degraded  but  hearty,  and,  above  all,  reso- 
lutely determined  not  to  be  overcome.  The  Norman- 
French,  in  the  mean  time,  led  but  a  sickly,  artificially  pro- 
longed life  in  walled  towers  and  gloomy  castles.  All  the 
efforts  of  the  Normans  to  impose  their  manners  and  their 
language  on  the  conquered  race  remained  wholly  ineffec- 
tive. The  mass  of  the  people  clung  to  their  old  habits  and 
old  words  with  wonderful  energy.  Hence,  although  the 
sixty  thousand  followers  of  the  Conqueror  were  at  once 
ennobled  by  the  simple  fact  of  their  victory  at  Hastings, 
and  large  portions  of  the  lands  of  England  were  at  once 
appropriated  to  them  as  the  reward  of  past,  and  an  incite- 
ment to  future,  services,  this  change  was  not  perceptible  in 
the  local  names  of  any  but  smaller  localities.  To  the 
latter  belonged  first  of  all  the  manors,  into  which  the 
greater  part  of  the  country  was  parcelled  out.  Not 
a  few  of  these  manor-houses  survive,  though  we  can  now 
hardly  imagine  the  effect  of  ten  thousand  such  man- 
sions suddenly  appearing  as  so  many  marks  of  the  con- 
quest, impressed  in  effect  on  every  separate  locality 
throughout  the  country.  Along  with  these  manors  the 
Normans  introduced  into  the  local  nomenclature  of 
England  numerous  castles,  which  the  Conqueror  and  his 
immediate  successors  caused  to  be  erected  in  all  parts  of 
the  land.  They  were  needed  to  enable  a  handful  of  hated 
foreigners  to  overawe  a  large  and  rebellious  population ; 
hence  they  were  walled  with  stone  and  designed  for  resi- 
dence as  well  as  for  defence.  The  king  himself  owned 
many  ;  his  barons  followed  the  example,  and  thus  the  Earl 
of  Mortaine  built  Montague  in  Somersetshire,  and  another 
Norman  noble  Beauvoir  Castle.  Frequently  the  Norman 
castle  took  its  name  from  the  neighboring  locality,  and  so 
there  still  exist  parishes  called  Castle  Hedingham,  Castle 
Gary,  Castle  Acre,  &c.     Most  of  the  castles  erected  at  a 


110  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

later  period,  and  which  had  frequently  served  as  mere  dens 
of  robbers,  were  subsequently  destroyed  under  Henry  11. 
In  some  instances,  however,  their  names  survive  their  ex- 
istence. Thus,  Castle  Baynard  and  Castle  Mountfichet^  which 
stood  upon  the  banks  of  the  Thames,  near  the  cathedral  of 
St.  Paul,  have  ceased  to  exist  since  the  great  fire  of  Lon- 
don in  1666;  hut  Baynard  Castle  is  still  the  name  of  the 
city  ward,  in  which  that  castle  was  once  situated.  As  the 
Norman  noble,  even  when  willing  to  call  his  town  or  vil- 
lage by  its  old  Saxon  name,  was  yet  not  always  able  to  lay 
aside  altogether  his  early  predilections,  we  find  not  un- 
frequently  very  eccentric  French  additions,  as  Adwick-/e- 
Street,  Bolton-^e-Moor  and  Thornton-Ze-Moor,  Laughten-e??.- 
Ze-Morthen,  Poulton-Ze-Sand,  Poulton-Ze-Tylde,  and  Buck- 
Xondi'tout- Saints,  with  many  others.  In  very  ^QVf  cases  only 
were  entirely  new  names  bestowed,  as  in  Battle,  Beaudesert, 
Beaumanoir,  Bellasis,  Belsise,  and  Belleau.  A  mixture  of 
old  and  new  produced  often  not  unpleasant  effects.  Thus 
Beaumaris,  in  the  isle  of  Anglesea,  looks  French,  but  sounds 
as  Bomorris  like  fair  Anglo-Saxon.  The  old  town  of 
Ashhy,  the  bye  or  town  of  the  Essi,  is  but  slightly  disguised 
by  its  foreign  owner's  name,  de  la  Zouche,  who  seems  to 
have  been  desirous  to  impress  upon  posterity  that  he  was 
"  of  the  genuine  stock."  It  was  also  a  common  custom 
simply  to  add  the  new  owner's  name  to  the  Saxon  name  of 
the  place,  and  already  Camden  has  Hurst  Pierpoint,  and 
Hurst  Monceaux,  and  Tarring  Neville,  and  Tarring  Peverell. 
Similar  names  are  Aston- Turville,  ^MYton-Segrave,  Burton- 
Latimer,  '^leMon-Mowhray,  and  many  others.  There  is  in 
the  County  of  Essex  a  place  of  great  natural  strength  on 
a  small  river,  which  gave  it  anciently  the  name  of  Depen- 
beck  —  the  deep  brook.  The  French  conquerors,  finding 
the  castle  renowned  in  many  a  ballad,  called  it  3falpas,  and 
as  such  it  became  famous  in  the  annals  of  later  Welsh  wars. 
Other  localities  have  fared  worse  and  suffered  sad  mutila- 
tion of  their  once  fair  names.     The  famous  T  Widdzug, 


NAMES   OF  PLACES.  Ill 

Conspicuous  Mountain,  in  Wales,  was  surnamed  Monthault 
by  the  Normans,  and  has  sunk  into  inglorious  Mold.  More 
unfortunate  still  was  the  high-sounding  Leiton  Beau  Desart, 
the  grassy  ground  near  the  beautiful  wooded  land,  which 
soon  appears  in  public  documents  as  Leiton  Busart,  and 
now  has  ignominiously  subsided  into  Leighton  Buzzard  ! 

Occasionally  we  find,  moreover,  among  local  names  in 
England,  not  uninteresting  allusions  to  certain  striking 
features  of  the  rule  of  the  Normans.  Such  are  the  many 
names  formed  with  forest,  which  did  not  mean  wood,  but 
indicated  privileged  localities,  created  mainly  for,  and  en- 
joyed by,  men  of  Norman  blood.  On  the  sea-coast  the 
Cinque  Ports  are  still  known  by  their  collective  name, 
though  their  individual  names  of  Sandwich,  Hastings,  Do- 
ver, New  Komney,  and  Hythe,  are  of  a  much  earlier  date. 
The  Church  has,  of  course,  also  left  a  strong  impress  of  its 
power  under  Norman  rule  on  numerous  localities.  They 
are  easily  recognized  by  their  ecclesiastical  titles,  as  Abhas- 
Combe,  Ahhotshury,  Priors  Hardwick,  Leamington-Pnors, 
Monh-W e^vmouth,  MonMand,  To^-Monachorum,  and  Toller- 
Fratrum,  by  way  of  antithesis  to  ToWqv- PorcorvAn,  the  ad- 
joining parish.  On  the  Tweed  the  stately  rule  of  the 
monks  of  Melrose  still  lives  in  the  well-known  name  of 
Ahhotsford.  Bishop's  Lynn  became  subsequently  by  ex- 
change King's  Lynn,  whilst  Kingsbury  passed  into  Kings- 
hury-Bpiscopi  ;  so  also  P/5^0/?- Auckland,  Bishop-%tokQ,  and 
with  double  emphasis  Bishop-Monhion.  Nor  ought  we  to 
omit,  finally,  the  Knights-Templars,  whose  large  possessions 
in  England  are  still  traceable  in  local  names,  and  add  to 
the  Norman  element.  They  are  generally  known  by  the 
addition  of  Temple,  as  at  Temple  in  Cornwall,  Temple- 
Bruer  in  Lincolnshire,  7^ew_p^e-Newsam  in  Yorkshire,  &c. 
The  head-quarters  of  these  soldiers  of  Christ  were  in  Lon- 
don, and  the  locality  is  still  known  as  The  Temple^  now  long 
in  the  possession  of  another  profession  —  Cedunt  arma  togm. 

The  slight  impression  which  Norman-French  has  pro- 


112  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

duced  on  English  local  names  is  easily  explained  by  the 
peculiar  nature  of  the  Conquest  itself.  The  new  ruler  had 
acquired  the  kingdom  by  a  single  victory ;  he  claimed  to 
succeed  lawfully  to  a  kinsman's  crown,  and  promised 
solemnly  to  observe  the  laws  granted  by  Edward  the  Con- 
fessor. The  conquered  nation  remained  on  their  native 
soil ;  the  nationality  was  not  broken  up  and  destroyed,  as 
that  of  the  Britons  had  been  by  the  Saxon  conquest. 
Only  slight  and  rare  changes  have,  therefore,  taken  place 
in  the  local  names  of  the  island  since  the  Norman  con- 
quest, and  England  is  still,  as  she  promises  to  remain  for 
many  a  century  to  come,  in  name  and  in  deed  the  cham- 
pion of  the  Saxon  race. 

The  case  of  American  local  names  is  entirely  different 
from  that  of  the  names  in  Great  Britain.  There,  succeed- 
ing races  left  their  impress  on  hill  and  dale,  city  and  vil- 
lage, river  and  lake,  now  in  rude  and  uncouth  terms,  and 
then  again  in  modem  speech,  but  always  intelligible,  always 
in  some  way  connected  with  the  life  of  the  people,  and 
never  wanting  a  historic  basis.  Here,  on  the  contrary,  a 
body  of  civilized  men,  who  had  already  learnt  to  appreciate 
the  advantage  of  an  established  nomenclature,  came  to  a 
new  country,  and  felt  few  wants  more  urgent  than  that  of 
giving  proper  names  to  their  future  dwelling-places  and  the 
prominent  objects  that  surrounded  it.  Now  it  seems  to  be 
beyond  the  power  of  man,  under  such  circumstances,  to 
invent  new  names.  The  Greeks,  with  all  their  fertility  of 
invention  and  a  wondrously  pliant  language,  proved  this 
in  their  colonies.  In  America,  certainly,  the  poverty  of 
imagination  and  the  awkwardness  in  applying  English 
names  to  new  localities  is  perfectly  astonishing,  and  has 
led  to  countless  inconveniences  and  frequent  ambiguities. 
The  Canadians  once  had  the  matter  made  a  subject  of 
official  complaint.  A  member  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
we  are  told,  who  was  born  in  the  colonies,  stated  with 
much  feeling,  that  the  ill-treatment  of  her  dependencies  by 


NAMES  OF  PLACES.  113 

the  mother  country  had  gone  so  far  as  to  induce  a  governor 
of  Canada  to  name  four  new  townships  after  his  wife's  pet 
dogs,  and  that  two  of  them,  called  Flos  and  Tiny,  still  re- 
mained there !  In  the  United  States  things  are  infinitely 
worse.  The  census  of  1860  shows  an  overwhelming  num- 
ber of  Athens  and  Spartas,  thirteen  Romes,  and  as  many 
Rochesters.  A  facetious  Englishman  expressed  lately  in 
an  American  paper  his  doubts  whether  the  name  of  Wash- 
ington appeared  on  the  lips  of  Americans  as  frequently 
now  as  formerly,  when  there  were  more  than  133  towns 
called  after  the  great  founder  of  the  Republic.  This 
might  be  pardoned  on  the  score  of  patriotism,  but  what 
shall  we  say  to  the  taste  that  made  nineteen  Browns 
and  ten  Smiths,  to  say  nothing  of  the  trouble  this  must 
give  to  postmasters !  There  were  at  the  same  time  more 
than  fifty  places  or  townships  called  Centre,  over  seventy 
that  bore  the  name  of  Liberty,  and  nearly  one  hundred 
and  twenty  named  Union ;  but  this  number  also  may  pos- 
sibly hereafter  be  diminished. 


CHAPTER  Vin. 

NAMES    OF   MEN. 
"  Bonum  nomen,  bonum  omen." 

Throughout  the  whole  of  antiquity,  from  the  first 
records  of  the  Bible  down  to  the  accounts  of  the  early 
Greeks  and  Romans,  there  appears  to  have  existed  a  mys- 
terious connection  between  names  and  their  meaning.  It 
is  well  known  that  this  correspondence  is  so  striking  in 
many  instances  as  to  have  induced  the  belief  of  an  inspired 
or  at  least  unconscious  expression  of  the  future  fate  of 
persons  in  their  first  naming.  Thus  the  fathers  of  the 
Church  saw  in  the  words,  "  God  called  the  light  day  and 
the  darkness  he  called  night,"  an  evidence  of  the  inability 
of  man  to  name  these  things  or  anything  else  without  the 
aid  of  the  Creator,  and  others  distinctly  ascribe  man's 
power  of  first  naming  the  animals  to  a  prophetic  gift. 
Greek  authors  abound  with  instances  of  the  vast  impor- 
tance their  countrymen  attached  to  the  meaning  of  proper 
names,  from  ^schylus's  "  Agamemnon,"  in  which  Helena  is 
alluded  to  as  having  both  Hell  and  Heaven  in  her  name, 
to  Herodotus,  who  mentions  the  encouragement  which  the 
accidental  omen  in  the  name  of  Begesistratus,  the  leader 
of  an  army,  gave  at  a  critical  moment.  The  Roman  creed 
on  this  subject  is  boldly  stated  in  the  lines  of  Ausonius  — 

''  Nam  divinare  est  nomen  componere,  quod  sit 
FortuniE,  morum  vel  necis  indicium." 

Cicero  tells  us  that  the  rolls  of  Roman  levies  were  sure 
to  begin  with  favorable  names  like  Victor^  Felix^  Fausttis, 


NAMES  OF  MEN.         I  iilf^^ 

or  Sectmdus,  and  if  they  could  obtain  a  Salvius  Valerius  to 
stand  at  the  head  of  the  list,  the  omen  was  hailed  with 
delight.  An  obscure  Scipio  once  obtained  the  command 
in  Spain  merely  upon  the  strength  of  his  name ;  while  the 
great  Scipio,  as  Livy  tells  us,  reproached  his  mutinous 
soldiers  for  having  obeyed  an  Atrius  Umher,  whom  he  calls 
a  "  dux  abominandi  nominisJ^ 

The  superstition  was  natural  enough  when  we  remember 
that  originally  all  names  had  a  meaning  suggestive  of  some 
peculiarity  of  the  bearer,  or  of  some  remarkable  incident 
connected  with  his  history.  Thus  the  oldest  known  to  us, 
Adam,  meant  Red,  probably  indicating  that  man's  sub- 
stance was  taken  from  the  red  ground ;  and  Moses,  drawn 
from  the  water.  In  like  manner  were  all  our  Saxon  names 
once  significant,  and  no  doubt  they  also  were  frequently 
given  to  children  with  an  open  conviction  or  a  secret 
hope  that  the  meaning  of  the  word  might  in  some  mys- 
terious manner  influence  the  future  destiny  of  the  infant. 
Alfred  is  thus  all-peace  (Germ.  Friede) ;  Egbert,  eye- 
bright  ;  Bernard,  the  great  bear ;  Biddulph,  the  slayer  of 
wolves ;  Edward,  the  guardian  of  truth,  like  Gertrude,  which 
has  the  same  meaning ;  and  Bertha,  the  bright.  These 
simple  names,  however,  naturally  soon  became  so  common 
to  many  owners  as  to  fail  in  conveying  individuality,  and 
this  led  to  the  addition  of  other  designations  now  known  to 
us  as  surnames. 

The  oldest  of  these  with  which  we  are  familiar,  are 
again  those  of  the  Bible,  which  in  their  earliest  form 
represent  invariably  true  patronymics.  We  read  of  Caleb, 
the  son  of  Jephunneh,  and  of  Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun.  For 
the  father's  name  was  soon  substituted  an  ordinary  word. 
Thus  dying  Rachel  had  called  her  child  Benoni,  the  son 
of  my  sorrow,  but  Jacob  gave  him  the  name  of  Benjamin, 
the  son  of  my  strength.  The  same  custom  prevailed  in 
Greek,  where  we  read  of  "iKapos  rov  AatSaAov,  and  of  AatSa- 
A.OS  rov  BvTrdXfxov,  The  custom  survives  in  our  Isaac  Jacob- 
son  or  Stephen  Fitzherbert. 


116  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Such  names  were  the  rule  in  England  before  the  Con- 
quest, when  as  yet  proper  names,  in  the  modern  sense  of 
the  word,  were  as  little  known  as  they  were  even  in  the 
last  century  in  Wales.  Only  about  a  thousand  surnames 
began  to  be  taken  up  by  the  most  noble  families  in  France 
and  in  England,  when  the  language  was  gradually  Frenchi- 
fied, about  the  time  of  Edward  the  Confessor.  The  lower 
nobility  did  not  follow  this  example  before  the  twelfth,  and 
citizens  and  husbandmen  had  no  names  of  their  families 
before  the  fourteenth  century.  It  is  probable,  though  not 
absolutely  certain,  that  surnames  were  at  first  always  writ- 
ten, "not  in  a  direct  line  after  the  Christian  name,  but 
above  it,  between  the  lines,"  as  Ducange  says,  and  thus 
were  literally  "  supranomina,''  or  surnames. 

Our  English  names,  most  of  which  have  arisen  subse- 
quently to  the  Norman  Conquest,  have  recruits  among 
them  from  almost  all  races  and  languages  known  upon 
earth.  The  Hebrew  itself  is  largely  represented  in  its 
ancient  Ben,  which  means  son.  It  has  given  us  Benjamin 
and  the  shorter  Benson,  Bendigo,  and  Benari,  Bendavid,  and 
Benoni.  The  corresponding  word  in  Syriac,  Bar,  is  of  less 
frequent  occurrence,  and  mostly  modernized,  as  in  Barron, 
which  now  stands  for  Baruch  ;  and  in  Bartholomew  and  its 
descendants.  This  tendency  to  disguise  old  testamentary 
names  has  led  to  much  ludicrous  sham-work,  both  in  the 
attempt  to  conceal  and  to  discover  the  ancient  forms. 
Abraham  is  shortened  into  Braham,  and  Moses  into  Mose- 
ley  or  Moss.  Solomon  becomes,  according  to  fancy  and 
taste,  Salmon  or  Sloman ;  Levi  is  transformed  into  French 
Lewis,  and  Elias  into  Ellis,  Our  Frepch  neighbors  are  as 
skillful  as  we  are  in  this  operation.  Few  readers  of  history 
will  recognize  in  the  great  Republican  Manuel,  the  sweet 
name  of  Emmanuel,  or  in  the  famous  banker  Wires,  the 
simple  German-Hebrew  Meyers.  Valiant  Manasseh  proves 
its  valor  on  Italian  battle-fields  as  modernized  Massena,  and 
the  vain  composer,  Herz  Adam  Levy,  adds  his  initials  to 


NAMES  OF  MEN.  117 

his  father's  name,  and  calls  himself  Halevi.  This  tendency 
is  pleasingly  illustrated  in  the  great  novelist  DTsraeli,  who 
loves  to  convert  every  great  man  of  our  day  into  a  descend- 
ant of  the  chosen  people,  as  the  Irish  aifirm,  with  great 
good  faith,  no  doubt,  that  all  the  heroes  of  recent  date 
belong  to  the  favored  isle.  Cavaignac  is,  in  their  eyes,  but 
bad  French  for  Kavanagh ;  Felissier,  of  Crimean  fame,  be- 
longed to  the  Palissers,  and  even  Garibaldi  was  originally 
Garry  Baldwin. 

Dutch  names  are  but  rare  in  English  families,  and  more 
frequently  to  be  met  with  in  those  parts  of  the  United 
States  where  eai-ly  Dutch  settlers  acquired  large  tracts  of 
land,  and  left  numbers  of  Van  JRenselaers,  Van  Schaiks, 
and  Van  Benthuysens  behind  them. 

The  three  most  numerous  patronymics  of  Celtic  origin, 
now  in  use  among  the  English  and  their  descendants,  are, 
of  course,  the  0,  the  Mac,  and  the  Ap,  of  the  three  Celtic 
branches  settled  in  the  United  Kingdom.  The  Irish  0,  or 
Oy,  is  said  by  their  own  writers  to  have  originally  meant 
grandson;  it  is  certain  that  the  old  Irish  Ui  was  formerly 
quite  frequent,  though  it  must  now  be  considered  extinct. 
Mr.  Lower,  in  his  charming  book  on  surnames,  tells  us  of 
an  old  Scotch  dame,  who  boasted  that  "  she  had  trod  the 
world's  stage  long  enough  to  possess  a  hundred  Oyes''  It 
cannot  be  denied,  that  the  unhappy  differences  between  the 
Emerald  Isle  and  the  ruling  island  have  frequently  led  to 
very  unjust  prejudices  against  this  0.  Thus  Pinkerton, 
who  argued  so  vehemently  the  inferiority  of  the  Celtic  race, 
said  contemptuously,  "  Show  me  a  great  O  and  I  am  done." 
The  prejudice,  however,  is  gradually  wearing  away,  as  the 
0  itself  is  disappearing  more  and  more ;  while,  on  the  other 
side,  more  careful  researches  lead  constantly  to  the  dis- 
covery of  facts  highly  creditable  to  the  ill-treated  race. 
The  most  interesting  among  them  is,  perhaps,  Mr.  Marsh's 
ingenious  interpretation  of  an  expression  in  the  Elder  Pliny, 
from  which  it  would  appear  that  the  Celts  had  reaping  ma- 


118  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

chines,  a  fact  which  certainly  overthrows  the  presumed 
inferiority  to  Roman  or  Anglo-Saxon  civilization.  Nor 
ought  it  to  be  overlooked,  that  the  O  Conneh  and  O  Con- 
nors have  made  their  mark  in  English  history,  and  the 
O'Donohue  is  still  ever  heard  where  Erin's  wrongs  are 
rehearsed.  In  France  their  0  has  been  slyly  incorporated 
into  the  name,  and  a  son  of  the  O'Dillons  has  there  become 
famous  as  Odilon  Barrot. 

That  the  0  itself  is  gradually  becoming  rarer,  is  partly 
due  to  the  voluntary  action  of  many  Irishmen,  but  mainly 
to  certain  violent  acts  of  the  British  Government,  which 
in  Ireland  as  in  Scotland  did  its  best  to  destroy  the  nation- 
ality of  the  subjugated  race.  The  crudest  act  of  all  was 
passed  by  the  Irish  Parliament  in  the  fifth  year  of  Edward 
IV.,  and  is  entitled  :  "  An  Act  that  the  Irishmen  dwelling 
in  the  counties  of  Dublin,  Meath,  Uriel,  and  Kildare,  shall 
go  appareled  like  Englishmen,  wear  their  beards  after  the 
English  manner,  swear  allegiance,  and  take  English  sur- 
names'^ Each  such  Irishman  was  to  "  take  to  him  an  Eng- 
lish surname  of  one  town,  as  Sutton,  Chester,  Trim,  Skrym 
(sic),  Cork,'Kinsale  ;  or  color,  as  White,  Black,  Brown;  or 
art  or  science,  as  Smith  or  Carpenter ;  or  office,  as  Cooke, 
or  Butler,  and  that  he  and  his  issue  shall  use  the  name 
under  pain  of  forfeiting  of  his  goods  yearly  till  the  prem- 
ises be  done."  It  was  then  the  McGowans  became  Smiths, 
and  the  Mclntyres  Carpenters. 

For  it  need  not  here  be  explained  that  the  Irish  use  fre- 
quently the  cognate  Mac,  so  that  there  was,  in  former  days 
at  least,  much  truth  in  the  well-known  lines : 

"  Per  Mac  atque  O  tu  veros  cognoscis  Hibernos, 
His  duobus  deinptis  nuUus  Hibernus  adest" 

This  Mac,  now  generally  looked  upon  as  Scotch,  meant 
also,  originally,  nothing  more  than  son,  or  male  descendant 
Macaulay  and  MCalloch  have  made  the  prefix  renowned 
all  over  the  world,  whilst  poor  McGowan,  once  famous, 
has  sunk  into  obscure   Smithson,  to  rise  once  more  in 


NAMES  OF  MEN.  119 

America,  through  his  munificent  endowment  of  the  Si;nith- 
sonian  Institute  at  the  seat  of  government.  McPriest, 
Mb  Bride,  and  Mo  Queen,  look  like  evidences  of  a  sad  dis- 
regard of  the  vows  of  celibacy,  but  fortunately  their  first 
meaning  is  rarely  present  to  the  mind.  Mc  Quaker,  a  name 
of  more  recent  origin,  has  a  spice  of  the  ludicrous.  McNahb 
meant,  after  the  same  manner,  the  son  of  the  Abbot,  and 
the  origin  of  the  name  McPherson  has  been  historically 
ascertained.  During  the  reign  of  David  I.,  king  of  Scot- 
land, we  are  told,  a  younger  son  of  the  powerful  clan  of 
Chattan,  became  Abbot  of  Kingussie.  The  elder  brother 
died  afterwards  childless,  and  the  chieftainship  fell  to  the 
share  of  the  venerable  father.  He  procured  the  necessary 
dispensation  from  Rome,  and  married  the  fair  daughter  of 
the  Thane  of  Calder.  A  swarm  of  little  Kingussies  fol- 
lowed, and  the  good  people  of  Inverness-shire,  in  their 
quaint,  straightforward  way,  called  them  McPhersons,  the 
sons  of  the  parson. 

This  instance  stands  by  no  means  alone,  but  similar 
vicissitudes  led  more  than  once  to  the  same  results.  Thus 
we  find  that  the  uncommon  name  of  Archbishop  arose  in  a 
like  manner.  It  originated  in  the  person  of  the  well-known 
Frenchman,  Hugh  de  Lusignan,  who  was  an  archbishop. 
By  the  death  of  one  of  his  brothers  he  became  the  heir  to 
the  family  estates  and  the  lordship,  and  applied  to  the 
Pope  for  a  license  to  marry,  in  order  that  the  noble  family 
might  not  be  doomed  to  become  extinguished.  The  per- 
mission was  granted,  but  coupled  with  the  condition  that 
his  descendants  should  bear  the  surname  of  Archevesque 
and  a  mitre  over  their  arms.  The  family  is  quite  numerous 
in  France,  and  still  use  the  prescribed  crest. 

Occasionally  the  word  Mac  gives  way  to  the  more  pre- 
tentious Clan,  the  Gaelic  for  offspring  or  descendants,  and 
this  furnishes  illustrious  names  like  that  of  Glanricarde. 

The  Welsh  Ap  is  the  Celtic  word  Mdb,  meaning  son. 
Mr.  Lower  tells  us  that  its  earliest  form  known  in  names 


120  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

was  Vap  or  Jlab,  as  it  is  written  in  the  days  of  Henry  VI. 
Under  the  seventh  Henry  we  find  it  used  thus:  (15  Henry 
VII.)  **  Morgano  Philip  alias  dido  Morgano  Vap  David  Vap 
Philip."  Subsequently  the  first  letter  being  lost  it  became 
simply  Ah  or  Ap,  and  was,  first  in  pedigrees,  placed  between 
the  son  and  the  father's  name,  by  which  means  it  gradually 
came  to  serve  as  a  surname.  This  survives  in  modem 
names  as  in  Thomas  Ap  Thomas.  But  since  the  Welsh 
have  taken  to  the  use  of  surnames,  after  the  manner  of 
their  English  neighbors,  they  generally  drop  the  a  and  con- 
nect the  b  or  p  with  the  father's  name,  thus  producing  reg- 
ular family  names.     In  this  manner  :  — 

Ap  Evan  is  now  Bevan,  Beavin  or  Bevins. 

Ap  Henry      "     Penry,  Perry,  Bany  or  Parry. 

Ap  Howel  "  Powell,  though  the  same  name  may  have  been 
derived  from  Paul,  as  we  find  it  spelt  in  Chau- 
cer (7229)  thus:  "After  the  text  of  Christ,  and 
Powel  and  Jon." 

Ap  Hugh  "  Pugh  and  later  Pye,  as  «  in  Welsh  often  has  the 
sound  of  y. 

Ap  Lewis     "        Blewis,  Blues. 

Ap  Llwd  (Lloyd)  is  now  Blewitt,  Blood  or  Floyd. 

Ap  Llewllen  has  early  become  Fluellen  —  a  name  which 
actually  existed  in  Stratford  during  the  lifetime  of  Shake- 
speare. Ap  Owen  is  Bowen.  Ap  Richard  Prichard,  and 
probably  also  Pickett^  unless  the  latter  is  derived  from  the 
French  Picot^.  Ap  Roderick  is  Broderick  and  Brodie, 
Ap  Roger,  Prodger,  Ap  Ross,  Prosser,  Ap  Rhys  (Rees) 
Pryce,  Brice,  and  Breese,  and  Ap  Watkin  Gwatkin. 

The  exaggerated  importance  which  Welshmen  are  re- 
ported to  attach  to  their  patronymics  has  given  rise  to  many 
an  unfair  jest  at  their  expense,  which  the  weakness  of  a 
few  of  their  race  would  hardly  seem  to  justify.  Already 
in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  a  judge,  to  whose  question 
how  he  was  called,  an  ancient  worshipful  Welshman  gravely 
replied :  "  Thomas  Ap  William,  Ap  Thomas,  Ap  Richard, 
Ap  Hoel,  Ap  Evan,"  &c.,  suggested  to  the  irate  owner  of 
the  endless  name  the  propriety  of  contenting  himself  with 


NAMES   OF  MEN.      ,  121 

the   name  of  Mostyn,  after  his  chief  residence.      A  like 

advice  might  have  benefited  the  happy  man  who  deduced 

the  name  of  Apollo,  to  his  own  satisfaction  at  least,  from  Ap 

Haul,  the  son  of  the  Sun.     Hence  the  bitter  lines  — 

*'  Cheese,  Adonis'  own  cousin-german  by  birth 
Ap  Curds,  ap  Milk,  ap  Cow,  ap  Grass,  ap  Earth." 

In  the  year  1299,  we  find  there  was  a  proud  Welshman 
summoned  to  Parliament,  by  the  name  and  title  of  Lord 
Ap  Adam,  though  it  is  not  stated  whether  he  traced  his 
descent  in  an  unbroken  line.  This  baron  of  so  ancient  a 
family  left  a  son,  but  neither  he  nor  any  of  his  descendants 
seem  ever  after  to  have  been  summoned  again.  Later 
descendants,  however,  have  carefully  noted  every  step  in 
the  pedigree  of  the  Ap  Adams,  and  may  yet  establish  their 
claim  to  a  seat  among  their  post-diluvian  brethren. 

There  is  another  a  occasionally  prefixed  to  names  which 
must  be  carefully  distinguished  from  its  Welsh  namesake. 
It  occurs  much  among  the  humbler  classes  in  Cumberland 
and  Westmoreland ;  as  in  William  a  Bills,  John  a  Toms, 
Billy  a  Luke,  where  it  seems  to  stand  simply  for  the  Eng- 
lish of,  with  the  father's  name.  In  other  cases  it  appears 
to  have  been  used,  after  the  fashion  of  the  Norman  de,  for 
the  Latin  ab,  as  in  John  a  Gaunt  (ab  Ghent),  and  in  the 
name  of  the  first  grand-master  of  the  Teutonic  order,  whom 
Fuller  calls  Henry  a  Walpole  (Holy  War.  II.  ch.  16).  We 
are  all  familiar  with  Thomas  a  Becket,  Anthony  a  Wood, 
and  Thomas  a  Kempis,  though  few  may  be  aware  that  the 
fictitious  name  of  John  a  Nokes  and  Tom  a  Styles  have 
been  handed  down  to  us  from  "Jack  Noakes  and  Tom 
Styles,"  who  formerly  served  as  representatives  of  the 
profanum  vidyus  or  our  more  fastidious  Tom,  Dick,  and 
Harry. 

The  Normans  added  to  these  three  patronymics  their 
own  Fitz,  the  much  abused  Jilius,  (fils,)  of  the  Romans. 
It  is  somewhat  strange,  however,  that  the  use  of  this  word 
is   now  unknown  in  France,  and  does   not  occur  in  the 


122  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

ancient  chronicles  of  that  country.  The  name  came,  we 
believe,  more  probably  from  Flanders,  and  was  only  sub- 
sequently adopted  by  the  Normans,  who  were  strangely 
proud  of  names  and  surnames.  Like  the  old  Romans,  of 
whom  already  Horace  said,  "  Gaudent  prcenomine  moUes 
auriculce"  (Sat.  II.  5-32,)  whilst  he  satirizes  one  as  "  Tam- 
quam  habens  tria  nomina"  they  loved  to  add  name  to  name, 
so  that  Fitzhamon's  daughter  could  justly  complain,  as  of 
a  great  wrong,  that  the  natural  son  of  Henry  I.,  whom  he 
gave  to  her  as  husband,  had  but  one  name.  The  king 
thereupon  bestowed  on  him  the  proud  name  of  Fitz-Roi, 
for,  says  she  in  the  poetical  version  of  the  event,  — 

"  It  were  to  me  great  shame 
To  have  a  lord  withouten  his  twa  name." 

Henry  II.,  to  recall  his  being  born  in  imperial  purple,  called 
himself  Fitz-Empress  ;  and  at  one  time  it  was  the  fashion 
among  old  Anglo-Saxon  families  to  exchange  their  ancient 
son  for  the  modern  ^te.  The  Sveynsons  thus  became  Fitz- 
Swains,  the  Hardysonnes  Fitz-Hardinges  and  the  ancient 
Ethelwulfs,  the  noble  descendants  of  the  Wolf,  whom  they 
called  farther  south  Guelph,  became  Fitz-  Urse.  Occasion- 
ally the  process  was  reversed.  Thus  King  Edward  I.,  who 
disliked  the  name  of  Fitz,  ordered  the  Lord  John  Fitz- 
Robert,  whose  ancestors  had  for  long  generations  used  each 
his  father's  Christian  name  as  a  surname,  to  "leave  the 
manner  and  to  be  called  John  of  Clavering,  which  was  the 
capital  seat  of  his  barony." 

Even  now  the  eldest  son  of  the  Earl  of  Malmesbury  is 
by  courtesy  called  Viscount  Fitz-Harris.  It  will  be  seen 
from  this,  how  erroneous  the  general  impression  is,  that 
Fitz  was  always  a  sign  of  illegitimacy.  On  the  contrary, 
it  was  probably  not  before  the  times  of  the  later  Norman 
kings  that  the  name  was  at  all  applied  to  bastards.  Since 
that  time,  however,  this  custom  has  been  regularly  kept  up, 
as  in  the  comparatively  recent  case  of  the  children  of  the 
Duke  of  Clarence  and  Mrs.  Jordan,  who  bear  the  name  of 
Fitz-  Clarence. 


NAMES  OF  MEN.  123 

The  very  large  number  of  English  names  which  are  de- 
rived from  saints,  have  mainly  come  down  to  us  from  the 
Normans,  though  some,  no  doubt,  are  derived  more  directly 
through  the  Church.  A  few  have  been  preserved  in  their 
purity ;  others  are  sadly  mispronounced,  as  St.  Leger  and 
St.  John.  The  majority,  however,  have  been  so  fiercely 
mutilated  that  but  for  authentic  documents  showing  the 
gradual  change,  their  present  form  would  scarcely  sug- 
gest their  original  formation :  — 

Sampole,  Sample,  or  Semple. 
Sidney. 

Tobyn  or  Dobbin,  a  degradation  due,  like  so 
many  others,  to  the  desire  of  certain  English 
settlers  in  Ireland  to  become  thoroughly  Hiber- 
nicized. 
Sinclair  or  Sinkler. 
Sillinger. 

Sarapire,  Sampler,  and  even  Yampert ! 
Toly. 

Tabby  or  Tebbs. 
now  Samand. 
"     Stydolph. 
"     Simbard. 

Most  of  these  changes  took  place  as  soon  as  the  loss  of 
Normandy  cut  off  English  noblemen  from  their  constant 
intercourse  with  France,  a  time  at  which  the  Saxon  ele- 
ment began  to  get  the  better  of  the  Norman  French,  and 
to  fashion  it  to  its  own  laws  of  euphony.  It  was  then,  also, 
that  other  French  names,  not  derived  from  saints,  under- 
went similar  mutilations,  when  La  Morte  Mer  gave  us  Mor- 
timer^ and  Le  Mart  Lac  our  Mortlahe  or  Mortlock,  when 
Beauchamp  began  to  sound  like  Beachame,  as  Troissart 
spelt  it  by  ear  in  1400,  Belvoir  became  Beever,  Gholmon- 
deley,  Ghomley,  and  the  French-English  word  skirmisher, 
from  escrime,  appeared  first  as  Scrymgeour  ! 

Among  the  early  Saxons,  the  good  old  rule,  "  One  person 
one  name,"  seems  at  first  to  have  prevailed,  as  even  before 
their  arrival  in  England,  neither  the  German  hero  Herr- 
mann nor  the  Celtic  Caractacus  had  been  distinguished  by 


Thus  St.  Paul  is  now 

St.  Denis 

u 

St.  Aubin 

u 

St.  Clara 

(( 

St.  Leger 

u 

St.  Pierre 

(( 

St.  Oly 

(( 

St.  Ebbe 

u 

St.  Amandus  is 

St.  Edolph 

St.  Barbe 

124  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

any  additional  epithet.    Very  soon,  however,  surnames  came 

into  fashion  among  them  also,  and  were  probably  first  taken 

from  some  outward  peculiarity,  as  the  ancient  3Iucel,  big, 

which  has  come  down  to  our  day  as  Mitchell.     Others  were 

taken  from  occupations,  and  form  a  class  so  overwhelmingly 

numerous  as  to  require  here  no  special  explanation.    It  will 

suffice  to  quote  the  quaint  words  of  an  old  writer  on  the 

subject,  which  cover  the  whole  ground :  "  Touching  such 

as  have  their  surnames  of  occupations,  as  Smith,  Taylor, 

Turner,  and  such  others,  it  is  not  to  be  doubted  but  their 

ancestors  have  first  gotten  them  by  using  such  trades,  and 

the  children  of  such  parents  being  contented  to  take  them 

upon  them,  their  afler-coming  posterity  can  hardly  avoid 

them,  and  so  in  time  cometh  it  rightly  to  be  said,  — 

*  From  whence  came  Smith,  all  be  he  knight  or  squire, 
But  from  the  smith  that  forgeth  at  the  fire  ? ' 

"  Neither  can  it  be  disgraceful  to  any  that  now  live  in 
very  worshipful  estate  and  reputation,  that  their  ancestors 
in  former  ages  have  been,  by  their  honest  trades  of  life, 
good  and  necessary  members  in  the  Commonwealth,  seeing 
all  gentry  hath  first  taken  issue  from  commonalty."  Cer- 
tainly a  Chaucer  had  no  cause  to  blush  for  his  descent  from 
a  hosier,  as  Camden  calls  his  ancestor,  from  its  being  the 
same  as  Ghausier,  the  name  of  the  man,  who  made  the 
chausse  or  hose,  which  in  those  days  served  to  clothe  both 
the  leg  and  the  foot.  This  tendency  toward  the  addition 
of  a  surname  seems  to  have  been  occasionally  exaggerated, 
else  Lord  Coke  would  not  have  felt  called  upon  to  say, 
"  that  special  heed  was  to  be  taken  to  the  name  of  baptism, 
because  a  man  cannot  have  two  names  of  baptism,  as  he 
may  have  divers  surnames."  Modern  usage  is  apt  to  sin  in 
the  opposite  direction. 

Together  with  these  fertile  sources  of  surnames,  patrony- 
mics also  were  employed  by  the  Saxon  race  to  obviate, the 
difficulty.  It  is  held  by  many,  that  the  oldest  of  this  stock 
is  kin,  a  Flemish  or  Frisic  termination,  but  probably  so 


NAMES   OF  MEN-.  125 

closely  connected  with  the  pure  Saxon  hin  as  to  make  it 
almost  impossible,  at  this  period,  to  decide  to  which  source 
each  name  is  due.  From  the  occurrence  of  the  same  words 
on  the  continent,  we  may  presume  that  especially  the  abbre- 
viated names  are  of  Frisic  origin,  such  as  Watkin,  Sitnkin, 
Jenkin,  Perkin,  and  Hodghin,  from  Walter,  Simon,  John, 
Peter,  and  Roger. 

The  most  fertile  of  all  is,  of  course,  the  good  old  Anglo- 
Saxon  son,  and  mixed  up  with  it,  now  inseparably,  the 
characteristic  letter  of  the  genitive,  our  s.  Thus  we  have 
obtained  from 

Harry  :         Harrison,  Harris,  Herries,  Hawes,  and,  with  the  aid  of  kin, 
Hawkins; 

Andrew :       Anderson,  Andrews,  Henderson ; 

Michael:        Mixon  (Mike's  son)  and  Oldmixon; 

Walter :         Walson,  Watts,  Watkins ; 

David :  Davidson,  Davies,  Dawson,  Daws ; 

Hodge :         Hodgson,  Hodges,  Hutchins,  Hutchkinson ; 

W'lr       •    i  Williamson,  Williams,  Wilson,  Wills; 
(  Wilkin,  Wilkinson,  Wilkes; 

■p.  i^„_j.     I  Richardson,  Richards; 

I  Dixon  (Dick's  son),  Dickens,  Dickenson; 

Adam :  Adamson,  Adams,  Atkin,  Atkins,  Atkinson ; 

Elias :  EUyson,  Ellis,  Ellice,  Elliot ; 

Anna:  Anson ;  — Nelly :  Nelson ;— Patty :  Patterson. 

A  similar  contraction  led  to  the  derivation  of  Megson 
and  Mixon  from  Meg  (Margaret),  of  Lawson  from  Law 
(Lawrence),  Jackson  from  Jack  (James),  Watson  from  Wat 
(Walter),  Gregson  from  Gregg  (Gregory),  Gibson  from 
Gibb  (Gilbert),  and  Samson  from  Sam  (Samuel).  Philip, 
which  in  a  similar  manner  appear  as  Phillips,  has  been 
contracted  into  Phipps,  a  name  of  aristocratic  import  in 
spite  of  its  extreme  brevity ;  whilst  in  another  direction  it 
has  expanded  into  Philipot,  and  thus  furnishes  the  name  of 
the  well-known  Bishop,  Dr.  Philpotts. 

Occasionally,  however,  the  termination  son  is  rather  due 
to  Danish  and  Norse  influence,  numerous  names  of  this 
kind  being  distinctly  traceable  to  Northern  men,  as  Swain- 
son  (Sveyn-sen),  Ericson  and  Andersen.     It  must,  also,  be 


126  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

borne  in  mind,  that  the  final  s  frequently  does  not  repre- 
sent the  genitive  of  the  father's  name,  but  the  plural  of 
some  outward  peculiarity,  from  which  the  name  is  derived. 
Bones  thus  belongs  not  inappropriately  to  a  medical  practi- 
tioner of  some  fame,  and  Shanks  seems  to  have  the  power  of 
attracting  public  attention  in  an  uncommon  degree,  if  we 
may  judge  from  the  number  of  Shanks,  Longshanks,  Cruik- 
shanks,  and  Sheepshanks  we  meet  with  in  history  and  in  ac- 
tual life.  Common  people,  it  is  well  known,  have  a  strange 
partiality  for  this  plural  form  in  s,  adding  it  even  to  the  verb 
in  the  vulgar  "  says  I."  To  this  tendency  we  are  probably  in- 
debted for  names  like  Flowers,  Grapes,  Crosskeys,  Briggs 
or  Bridges,  Banks,  Boys,  Brothers,  Cousins,  and  Children. 

A  different  process  has  led  in  Italian  to  the  designation 
of  whole  families  from  some  peculiarity  of  appearance  or 
some  profession,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Medici,  who  had  long 
ceased  to  be  physicians,  when  they  were  still  so  called  after 
an  ancestor  of  fame,  and  of  the  charming  Bello  or  Rosso, 
who  left  behind  them  families  of  Rossi  and  Belli,  and  little 
Rossini  and  Bellini. 

The  old  Saxon  derivation  ing  has  lefl  us  unfortunately 
but  a  small  variety  of  proper  names  in  daily  use,  such  as 
Manning  and  Dunning ;  still  it  is  said  that  there  are  up- 
wards of  two  thousand  names  which  contain  this  pure 
Anglo-Saxon  patronymic.  Sometimes  it  becomes  the  ter- 
mination of  a  local  name,  but  generally  it  is  placed  before 
the  part  which  signifies  dwelling,  as  in  Kensington  and 
Islington.  In  Harlington,  for  instance,  it  means  the  town  or 
the  settlement  of  the  Harlings,  the  descendants  of  an  an- 
cient Harl  or  Jarl  (Earl),  and  it  has  already  been  mentioned 
that  the  Billings,  one  of  the  royal  races,  have  in  all  prob- 
ability lefl  their  name  attached  to  Billingsgate. 

The  expressive  hin  is  much  more  largely  represented. 
Derived  from  the  ancient  cyn,  it  meant  originally  race,  and 
hence  gave  us  cyning,  now  king,  the  descendants  of  the 
race  by  eminence,  as  the  sons  of  the  French  king  were 


NAMES  OF  MEN.  127 

with  like  exclusiveness  long  known  as  Jils  de  France,  the 
children  of  France.  Thence  came  also  cyned,  now  hind,  com- 
prising all  who  belong  to  the  same  race  or  class.  This  is  the 
true  meaning  to  be  given  to  the  biblical  expression  of  "  trees 
bearing  each  after  its  own  hind  ;  "  and  to  Hamlet's  words, 
"  a  little  more  than  kin  and  less  than  hindJ'  In  its  second- 
ary meaning  we  find  the  suggestion,  that  what  is  of  the 
same  race  and  blood  must  needs  feel  affectionately  one  to 
another,  and  thus  hindness  became  equivalent  to  benevo- 
lence, brotherly  love,  &c.  Added  to  the  father's  name,  it 
has,  from  the  earliest  times,  served  to  designate  the  de- 
scendants, and  thus  we  have  obtained  Wilhin,  Tomhin,  Per- 
kin  (Peterkin),  and  their  derivatives  Wilhins,  Wilhinson,  &c. 

Of  equal  antiquity,  but  of  much  rarer  occurrence,  are  the 
names  obtained  by  means  of  the  Saxon  termination,  och,  as 
in  FoUoch,  from  Paul,  and  contracted  into  Folh,  which  is 
oflen  connected  with  the  first  name  by  an  inserted  c,  as  in 
Wilcox  (Will-c-ock's)  and  Fhilcox. 

It  speaks  well  for  the  religious  sense  of  the  people,  that 
names  derived  from  the  Creator  are  so  much  less  frequent 
in  English  than  in  other  languages.  Nothing  exists  among  us 
like  the  French  Dieu,  which  occurs  in  the  history  of  France 
from  the  oldest  times  down  to  the  Crimean  war,  or  the  Ger- 
man Herrgott  (Lord  God),  the  name  of  a  well-known  author. 
Spain  and  Italy  abound,  besides,  in  Jesus,  Gesu,  and  Gesu 
Maria.  Our  Goddard,  Godfrey,  and  Godwin  have  all  come 
to  us  from  Germany,  and  hardly  convey,  in  their  present 
form,  any  suggestion  of  irreverence.  It  is  questionable  if 
our  Old  English  Bigod  has  any  thing  to  do  with  the  habit 
of  the  first  owner  to  take  the  name  of  the  Lord  in  vain, 
although  it  is  well  established  that  the  Normans  obtained 
this  name  from  the  French  on  account  of  the  frequency  of 
their  oaths,  as  the  English  are  still  occasionally  called  God- 
dams,  or  Jean  Gottam,  for  a  similar  reason.  The  true 
origin  of  the  name  is  probably  identical  with  that  of  bigot. 

We  make  more  free  with  the  names  of  Pagan  gods,  and 


128  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

borrow  especially  largely  from  Scandinavian  mythology. 
Wodan  gives  us  thus  not  only  our  Wednesdays,  but  also 
Wodnesheorg,  now  called  Wanhorough  and  Wanshorough  as 
a  surname.  Thor,  from  which  we  have  Thursday,  occurs 
quite  frequently,  as  Thorcshy,  Thurshy,  and  Thurlow.  The 
ancient  goddess  Freia,  to  whom  we  owe  Friday,  reappears 
fully  in  Fridaythorpe,  and  in  the  surname  Frewin  it  is  found 
analogous  to  Godwin.  The  god  Saster,  preserved  in  Sat- 
urday, has  given  his  name  in  like  manner  to  several  local- 
ities, and  to  Satterthwaite. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  here  to  enter  into  a  full  explanation 
of  the  host  of  English  surnames.  The  work  has  been  ad- 
mirably done  by  men  of  great  learning  and  research,  and 
yet,  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  a  small  proportion  of  the 
thirty  or  forty  thousand  surnames  in  our  language  have 
been  fully  explained.  They  are  derived  from  almost  every 
possible  condition  of  personal  qualities,  natural  objects,  oc- 
cupations and  pursuits,  localities,  and  ft-om  mere  caprice 
and  fancy.  We  will  here  only  allude  to  a  few  peculiarities 
connected  with  certain  classes  of  names,  which  deserve  fuller 
investigation. 

The  Norman-French  brought  with  them  a  large  number 
of  names  which  were  either  derived  from  places  on  the 
continent,  and  marked  as  such  by  having  a  de  prefixed,  as 
De  Quincey  and  De  Vere ;  or,  not  being  local,  they  were 
characterized  by  Le,  as  Le  Marshall,  Le  Latimer,  Le  Bas- 
tard, Le  Strange,  Le  Vert,  and  Le  Fevre,  the  most  aristo- 
cratic form  of  the  universal  Smith  which  we  possess.  A 
large  ^  number  of  both  of  these  classes  have  lost,  in  the 
course  of  being  Anglicized,  both  in  form  and  meaning  so 
much  that  it  is  not  always  easy  to  retrace  them  now  to 
their  first  origin.     Thus, 

Le  Dispensier,  subsequently  known  as  Le  Spencer,  was 
originally  the  "  dispensator  "  or  steward  to  the  household. 
The  officer,  who  accompanied  the  Conqueror  became  of 
course  a  great  baron  in  England,  and  at  the  same  time  the 


NAMES  OF  MEN.  129 

father  of  the  illustrious  house  of  Spenser,  now  represented 
by  the  Duke  of  Marlborough. 

Le  Gros  Veneur,  anciently  the  great  huntsman  to  the 
Dukes  of  Normandy,  founded  in  like  manner  the  house  of 
Grosvenor. 

Le  Naper,  now  known  as  Napier,  was  the  officer  who 
took  charge  of  the  Duke's  "  napery,"  his  table-linen,  &c. 
This  derivation  of  the  noble  house  of  Napier,  is  certainly 
less  romantic  than  that  which  ascribes  it  to  the  grateful 
monarch's  eulogy  of  "  No  Peer,"  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
far  more  authentic.  He  was  the  officer  who  had  charge  of 
the  Duke's  table-linen,  and  especially  of  the  "  nappe  "  used 
in  washing  hands  before  and  after  meals,  which  it  was  his 
especial  privilege  to  present  to  his  Lord.  Another  part  of 
his  duty  in  the  royal  household  was  to  hand  over  to  the 
king's  almoner  the  old  linen  of  the  king's  table  for  distri- 
bution among  the  poor. 

De  la  Chambre,  the  first  Chamberlain  known  to  England 
by  that  name,  soon  dwindled  into  Chambers  in  England, 
and  the  corresponding  Chalmers  in  Scotland. 

Summoner  became  curt  Sumner ;  the  Falconer,  simple 
Faulkner  ;  and  other  French  names  were  treated  still  worse. 
The  heroic  Taillefer,  who  marched  before  the  Conqueror's 
host,  singing  ancient  war-songs,  survives  now  only  as  Telfair 
with  us,  whilst  in  Italy  his  name  has  been  softened  into 
Tagliaferro,  which  they  pronounce  in  the  Southern  States 
as  if  it  were  written  Toliver.  The  fair  De  Champ  is  now 
ill-sounding  Shands  ;  Belle  Chere,  taken  from  what  Chau- 
cer means  when  he  says,  — 

"  For  cosynage  and  eke  for  bele  cheer,"  (4820) 
is  now  unpleasantly  suggestive  as  Belcher.     Molyneux,  in 
humble  life,  is  written,  as  well  as  pronounced,  Mullnicks ; 
and  saintly  Theobald,  as  Tipple  ! 

Many  Norman  names,  taken  from  the  bearer's  native 
land  or  town,  have  suffered  in  a  way  to  make  us  tremble 
for  the  future  fate  of  many  of  our  own  names.     The  Paga- 


130  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

nus  became  first  a  Painini,  and  then,  shorter  still,  Payne  ; 
the  Genoese  is  now  a  Janeway,  and  the  man  from  Hog- 
stepe'  calls  himself  Huchstep,  or  even  Huck.  In  like  man- 
ner the  man  from  Bretagne  became  a  Bret  or  De  Brett,, 
Debrett ;  he  from  Bourgoyne,  a  Burgogne  or  Burgwin  ;  from 
Gascoyne,  a  Gascogne  or  Gashin ;  from  Hainault,  a  Hane- 
way ;  from  Lorraine  a  Loring,  and  from  the  East  gen- 
erally, a  Sterling,  through  Easterling.  But  the  worst  fate 
befell  three  unlucky  wights,  who  came  over  from  three  little 
towns  in  Normandy.  One  was  called  de  Ath,  and  is  now 
Death  ;  another,  de  Ville,  and  became  briefly  Devil;  and  a 
third,  from  Scardeville,  branched  off  into  two  lines  of  de- 
scendants, peaceful  Scarjields,  and  terrible  Scaredevils. 

This  process  of  changing  foreign  names  is  actively  going 
on  in  our  midst,  thanks  to  the  variety  of  European  elements 
which  flow  into  the  great  mass  of  our  people.  Occasion- 
ally, the  change  can  be  clearly  traced,  as  in  local  names. 
Thus  we  find  the  river  de  la  feve,  as  the  French  settlers 
called  the  tributary  of  the  Mississippi,  which  passes  by  Ga- 
lena, soon  changed  into  the  more  familiar  name  of  Fever 
River.  The  same  takes  place  among  our  Canadian  neigh- 
bors, where  a  French  population  is  slowly  giving  way  to 
English  settlers,  and  the  old  French  names  undergo  strange 
alterations.  Thus,  a  place  on  the  Ottawa,  formerly  called 
Les  Cheneaux,  or  The  Channels,  has  become  in  pronuncia- 
tion The  Snows,  and  the  spelling  will  probably  soon  follow 
the  sound.  Another  settlement,  which  for  some  reason  or 
other  was  called  Les  Chats,  is  rapidly  changing  into  TTie 
Shaws ;  and  a  third,  Les  Joaquins,  is  altogether  transformed 
into  The  Swashings.  A  hill  near  the  Bay  of  Fundy,  once 
poetically  designated  by  the  Acadians  as  Ghapeau  de  Dieu 
(God's  hat),  is  now  called  Shepody  Mountain  !  Nor  are 
these  changes  confined  to  French  names  under  English 
rule  only,  but  foreign  words  of  any  kind,  when  used  by 
ignorant  men,  have  suffered  in  like  manner.  Thus  the 
Indian  name  of  a  river  in  New  Brunswick,  Pekantediac 


NAMES  OF  MEN.  131 

(river  in  white  birch  land),  is  there  popularly  known  as 
Tom  Kedgewich,  and  numerous  instances  of  like  transfor- 
mations are  found  in  every  section  of  the  United  States. 

By  the  side  of  such  unmerciful  treatment,  the  most  vio- 
lent contractions  in  sound  appear  but  trifling  injuries  done 
to  a  name.  The  noble  owners  of  Cholmondeley,  Marjori- 
banks,  and  Tollemache  may,  after  that,  well  bear  their 
curtailment  into  Chumley,  Marchhanhs,  and  Talmash  ;  and 
even  the  descendant  of  the  Danish  monarch's  cup-bearer, 
originally  known  as  Schenhe,  and  so  called  by  Shakespeare 
and  Dryden,  might  be  reconciled  to  his  modern  appellation 
of  Skinker. 

Families,  moreover,  were  not  the  only  sufferers  by  such 
violence.  The  names  of  towns  and  places,  of  public  and 
private  houses,  even  though  of  good  English  origin,  were 
in  like  manner  ill-treated  and  changed  beyond  all  power 
of  recognition.  It  might  be  pardonable,  from  the  truth- 
fulness of  the  description,  to  change  St.  Dacre  into  Sandy 
Acre,  a  parish  in  Derbyshire ;  and  the  Chartreuse,  a  former 
Carthusian  monastery  of  great  renown,  suppressed  during 
the  Reformation,  into  Charter- House.  There  is  no  harm 
in  turning  Boulogne  Mouth,  the  sign  of  a  tavern  much  fre- 
quented by  sailors  from  that  locality,  into  Bull  and  Mouth  ; 
or  La  Belle  Sauvage,  the  name  of  another  inn,  the  lease 
of  which  had  been  granted  to  Mrs.  Isabella  Savage,  into 
Bell  and  Savage,  although  the  pictorial  illustrations  which 
accompany  the  names  are  enigmatic  enough  to  puzzle  the 
most  cunning  antiquarian.  The  frequenters  of  the  ale- 
house of  the  Cat  and  Wheel,  will  be  little  disposed  to  quar- 
rel with  the  owner  because  he  substituted  those  simple 
words  for  the  more  pretentious  Catharine  on  the  Wlieel,  of 
his  predecessor ;  and  the  Bag  of  Nails  of  a  well-known 
public-house  in  Pimlico  is  deservedly  more  popular  now 
than  it  was  under  its  classic  name  of  Bachanalia.  But  we 
think  we  have  a  right  to  complain  when  St.  Mary  on  the 
Bourne,  ^.  e.,  on  the  river,  is  travestied  into  Marylehone, 


132  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

as  Old  Bourne  was  into  Holhorne ;  and  when  the  memory 
of  the  gentle  nuns  of  St.  Helena,  whom  our  forefathers 
revered  as  Mincheons,  is  drowned  in  the  change  from 
Mincheons'  Lane,  which  passed  their  ancient  house,  into 
Mincing  Lane.  Few  of  us  would  recognize  in  the  sign  of 
George  and  Cannon,  a  tribute  to  the  fame  of  George  Can- 
ning ;  in  the  Plum  and  Feather,  the  Prince  of  Wales's  Plume 
of  Feathers ;  in  the  Bull  and  Gate,  the  Boulogne  Gate,  a 
trophy  taken  by  Henry  VII. ;  and  still  less  is  it  suspected 
by  many  admirers  of  that  ancient  play,  Punch  and  Judy, 
that  the  names  represent  nothing  less  than  Pontius  cum 
Judceis,  a  relic  of  an  ancient  Mystery  taken  from  St.  Mat- 
thew xxvii.  V.  19. 

The  derivation  of  the  oft-quoted  sign  of  the  Goat  and 
Compasses,  from  the  supposed  Puritan  inscription,  "  God 
encompasseth  us,"  has  fortunately  given  way  to  a  more 
simple  and  more  correct  explanation.  It  has  been  ascer- 
tained that  a  company  of  wine-coopers  in  Cologne  bore  in 
its  arms  a  pair  of  compasses  in  allusion  to  their  craft,  and 
two  goats  as  supporters.  Now  it  is  but  fair  to  suppose  that 
these  arms  were  branded  on  casks  containing  Rhenish  wine, 
as  is  the  custom  to  this  day,  and  that  they  were,  very  natu- 
rally, transferred  thence  to  the  sign-board  of  an  inn  or  a 
vintner's  house. 

Compound  surnames  are  plentiful,  and  often  ludicrous 
enough,  when  looked  upon  apart  from  the  time  and  the 
circumstances  which  first  suggested  their  formation.  Mas- 
singer  ought  ever  to  be  a  Catholic,  to  sing  masses,  and 
Shakelady  would  hardly  be  admitted  into  good  society,  if  he 
should  presume  to  make  his  name  good.  How  Doolittles 
get  along  in  life  is  a  mystery ;  a  greater  one  yet  the  pa- 
tience with  which  men  submit,  generation  after  generation, 
to  be  called  Gotohed,  Popki^s,  or  Stabback.  Total  abstjnence 
seems  to  have  been  in  vogue  from  of  old,  if  we  may  judge 
from  the  fondness  of  all  nations  for  the  name  of  Drink- 
water,  which  has  given  us  Bevilacquas  in  Italy,  and  Boileaus 


NAMES  OF  MEN.  133 

in  France.  Sir  Thomas  Leatherhreeches  had  weight  enough 
to  carry  his  uncomfortable  name  into  the  best  company, 
and  whilst  Winspear  has  become  a  great  name  in  Naples, 
Shakespeare  is  immortal.  Our  Puritan  fathers,  it  is  well 
known,  indulged  in  a  sad  fancy  for  Scriptural  names,  which 
became  unpardonable  when  extended  to  whole  phrases. 
On  Hume's  roll  of  a  Sussex  jury,  we  find,  among  others, 
Mr.  "  Fight-the-good-jight-of-Faith  White,''  of  Ewen,  and 
Mr.  "  Kill  Sin  Pimple,''  of  Witham.  The  most  unfortu- 
nate of  all  was,  perhaps,  the  brother  of  the  famous  dealer 
in  leather  who  presided  over  the  Rump-Parliament.  His 
pious  parents  had  had  him  christened  as  "  If-  God-had-not- 
died-for-thee-thou-hadst-heen-damned ; "  and,  as  no  mortal 
man  could  utter  the  whole  each  time  that  he  spoke  of  or 
to  the  good  man,  he  was  universally  known  as  ''  Damned 
Barebones." 

Such  vagaries,  however,  are  by  no  means  of  recent  ori- 
gin. The  great  dialectician,  Diodorus,  in  order  to  show 
that  language  was  the  result  of  an  arbitrary  choice  of  words, 
and  not  a  living  organism,  pointed  in  triumph  to  his  slaves, 
to  whom  he  had  given  new  names,  calling  one  "Os,  and 
another  'AAXct/xr/i/,  in  order  to  prove  that  any  word  might 
be  made  significative  at  will.  There  was,  of  course,  as  lit- 
tle connection  here  between  such  names  and  the  owners,  as 
there  is  between  the  poor  slave  and  his  name,  chosen  by  ca- 
price from  those  of  free  and  famous  Romans.  A  German 
author  of  considerable  fame,  imposed,  in  similar  manner, 
his  pseudonym  of  Posgaru  for  many  years  on  the  world, 
which  admired  his  works  and  believed  in  his  name.  He 
was  enjoying  much  reputation,  even  in  England,  as  the  suc- 
cessful translator  of  Manfred,  before  it  was  discovered  that 
he  had  hidden  himself  behind  the  question  "  IIojs  yap  ov  ?  " 

Double  names  are  not  frequent  among  us.  They  occur 
mostly  when  Norman  names  have  been  Anglicized ;  we 
have  thus  d' Anton  and  Danton ;  d'Auhry  and  Dohree ; 
d^Auheny  and  Dauheny.     Other  foreign  names  have  been 


134  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

translated  and  modified.  The  French  Le  Blond  reappears 
as  English  Fairfax,  and  mutilated  Blount  and  Eland.  The 
German  Schwarz  is  now  Black,  and  now  Swart  or  Smarts  ; 
Klein  is  Little  or  Small  or  Kline.  A  curious  class  of  dou- 
ble names  belong  to  families  who  bear  them  on  the  pretext 
of  an  alias.  Documents  abound  in  which  the  same  name 
occurs  not  once,  which  might  have  been  accident,  but  con- 
tinually accompanied  by  its  shadow.  Thus,  under  the  date 
of  1535  already  we  meet  with  a  "  Ricardus  Jackson,  alias 
Kenerden."  In  Scotland  the  custom  prevailed  for  some 
time  to  use  the  Gaelic  name  with  the  English  transla- 
tion superadded.  Men  called  themselves  McTavish  alias 
Thomson,  McCalmon  alias  Dorr,  or  Gow  alias  Smith. 
Hence,  probably,  arose  the  eccentric,  and  other^vise  inex- 
plicable custom  of  some  families  to  write  themselves  by 
one  name  and  to  call  themselves  by  another,  as  with  the  En- 
roughty's,  who  are  called  Derby.  The  alias  was  gradually 
omitted,  and  the  two  names  remained  to  be  used  for  two 
distinct  purposes. 

As  the  oldest  coats  of  arms  in  the  nobility  of  almost  all 
countries  are  the  simplest,  consisting  generally  but  of  a 
single  device,  so  the  oldest  names,  also,  may  be  presumed 
to  have  been  extremely  simple.  "  Nomen  olim  apud  omnes 
fere  gentes  simplex^*^  says  an  excellent  authority  on  the  sub- 
ject. Notwithstanding  this  prestige,  however,  there  seems 
to  have  prevailed,  from  olden  times,  a  dislike  to  very  short 
and  simple  names.  Lucian  tells  us  of  a  man  called  Simon, 
who,  "  having  now  gotten  a  little  wealth,  changed  his  name 
into  Simonides,  for  that  there  were  so  many  beggars  of  his 
kin,  and  set  his  house  on  fire,  in  which  he  was  born,  so  that 
nobody  could  point  at  it."  A  slave,  Pyrrhius  or  Dromo, 
on  succeeding  to  a  rich  inheritance,  changed  his  name  to 
Megacles,  just  as  Diodes,  upon  becoming  Emperor,  ffelt 
called  upon  to  lengthen  his  to  Dioclesian.  Early  French 
history  tells  us  of  Bruna,  who  became  Queen  of  France, 
when  it  was  thought  proper  to  convey  something  of  regal 


NAMES  OF  MEN.  135 

pomp  in  her  name,  and  so  she  was  called  Brunehault.  A 
somewhat  similar  reason  induces  the  popes  to  change  their 
name  as  soon  as  the  fisherman's  ring  is  placed  upon  their 
forefinger,  a  custom  they  have  observed  ever  since  the 
name  of  one  of  their  number,  Sergius,  which  meant  Hog's 
Mouth  or  Groin,  made  it  necessary  for  decency's  sake. 

Louis  XI.  had  an  even  better  reason  for  changing  the 
name  of  his  favorite,  Olivier  le  Diable,  which  he  first 
altered  to  Olivier  le  Mauvais,  and  when  that  also  suggested 
the  truth  still  too  forcibly,  to  Olivier  le  Daim,  forbidding  at 
the  same  time  the  former  names  ever  to  be  mentioned  !  It 
is  quite  a  comfort  to  compare  with  this  the  change  of  a 
man  as  great  and  virtuous  as  Olivier  was  mean  and  wicked. 
Maria  Theresa  had  an  excellent  minister,  who  suffered 
under  the  misfortune  of  an  ill-omened  name,  Thunichtgut, 
Do-no-good ;  the  great  Empress,  in  acknowledgment  of  his 
virtues  and  his  signal  services,  ordered  it  to  be  changed 
into  Thugut^  our  Dogood. 

In  England  also  the  change  is  not  rare,  though  a  happy 
excuse  was  made  for  short  names  by  worthy  John  Cuts,  an 
opulent  citizen  of  London,  to  whose  house  and  care  the 
Spanish  ambassador  had  been  assigned.  The  proud  Span- 
iard complained  officially  of  the  "  shortness  of  name  "  of 
his  host,  which  he  thought  disparaging  to  his  honor. 
"But,"  says  Fuller,  "when  he  found  that  his  hospitality 
had  nothing  monosyllabic  in  it,  he  groaned  only  at  the 
utterance  of  the  name  of  his  host." 

An  entire  change  of  name  was  not  unknown  to  our  fore- 
fathers. Even  Camden  tells  us  that  this  was  quite  fre- 
quently done  in  his  time  "  to  modify  the  ridiculous,  lest  the 
bearer  should  be  vilified  by  them."  This  wish  to  get  rid 
of  a  vulgar  or  ill-sounding  name  created,  at  an  early 
period,  the  habit  of  giving  Latin  and  Greek  forms,  which 
meet  us  so  frequently  in  history.  The  great  theologian 
Schwarzerd,  Luther's  friend,  became  thus  familiarly  known 
to  us  as  Melancthon  (Black  Earth)  ;  and  the  great  Neander 


136  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

of  our  day  was,  before  he  became  a  convert  to  Christianity, 
known  as  the  Jew  Neumann,  just  as  a  former  Hosemann 
(man  .of  hose)  called  himself  Osiander.  The  English 
physician  Key,  in  like  manner,  Latinized  his  name  into 
Caius,  suggestive  of  some  relationship  to  the  great  Roman 
jurist,  and  perpetuated  it  handsomely  in  the  College  of 
Gonville  and  Caius  of  Cambridge,  although  everybody 
now  calls  it,  regardless  of  the  founder's  pardonable  vanity, 
simply  Key's  College.  The  same  period  gave  birth  to  the 
two  names  of  Caius  and  Magnus,  both  still  famous  in 
England  and  Germany. 

It  is  less  easy  to  account  for  the  wish  of  Lord  Byron  to 
be  called,  not  by  his  English  name,  but  by  that  of  the 
French  family  of  Biron,  than  to  appreciate  the  reasons 
which  induced  Napoleon,  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  mar- 
velous career,  to  denationalize  his  Italian  name  of  Buona- 
parte, and  to  make  it  French  as  Bonaparte.  We  can  under- 
stand, also,  why  the  O'Briens  of  Ireland  should  be  willing, 
in  our  day,  to  exchange  their  name  for  that  of  Stafford, 
since  the  famous  conspiracy  in  the  cabbage-garden  has 
given  an  unenviable  notoriety  to  the  former.  We  all  know 
why  our  friend  Smith  writes  himself  Smythe  or  Smeeth,  or 
even  Smijthe,  and  when  driven  to  the  wall  has  been 
known  to  change  it  into  Furnace.  This  recalls  to  us 
Swift's  sneer :  "  I  know  a  citizen  who  adds  or  changes  a 
letter  in  his  name  with  every  plum  he  acquires ;  he  now 
wants  only  a  change  of  a  vowel  to  be  allied  to  a  sovereign 
prince  (Farnese)  in  Italy." 

The  Taylors,  in  the  same  way,  are  apt  to  become  Tay- 
leursy  of  whom  Mr.  Lower  tells  the  following  good  story : 
A  Mr.  Tayleur,  who  had  been  thus  modified,  asked  a 
farmer  somewhat  haughtily  the  name  of  his  dog.  The 
answer  was,  *'  Why,  sir,  his  proper  name  is  Jowler ;  but 
since  he  's  a  consequential  kind  of  a  puppy  we  calls  him 
Jowleure."  If  Plato  was  right  in  recommending  parents 
to  give  happy  names  to  their  children,  because  the  minds. 


NAMES  OF  MEN.  137 

actions,  and  successes  of  men  depended  not  on  their  genius 
and  fate  only,  but  also  on  their  names,  then  we  can  cer- 
tainly not  blame  those  who  desire  to  rid  themselves  of  an 
ill-omened  name.  They  may  remember  what  befell  the 
unlucky  princess  of  Spain,  whose  name  cost  her  a  throne. 
For  when  the  good  King  Philip  of  France  had  determined 
to  seat  a  queen  by  his  side,  he  sent  ambassadors  to  his 
neighbor  the  King  of  Spain,  and  gave  them  license  to 
choose  one  of  his  two  daughters  for  their  sovereign.  They 
were  struck  with  the  beauty  of  the  elder  sister,  and 
decided  among  themselves  that  both  on  account  of  her  age 
and  her  charms  she  would  be  a  fit  bride  for  their  master. 
But  of  a  sudden  their  opinion  was  changed.  They  had 
been  informed  that  the  beauty  was  called  Uracca,  whilst 
her  younger  and  less  attractive  sister's  name  was  Blanca. 
That  name  of  Uracca  destroyed  all  other  charms ;  they 
gave  up  their  own  preference  and  led  the  younger  princess 
back  with  them  to  rule  over  France.  History  has  more 
than  one  such  answer  to  the  ofl-quoted  "What's  in  a 
name  ? "  Perhaps  parents  would  be  more  guarded  in 
naming  their  children  if  they  thought  how  much  more 
pleasing  Mary^  Anna,  and  Lucy  sound,  even  to  the  unedu- 
cated ear,  than  barbarous  Barbara,  the  little  bear  Ursula^ 
or  the  heathen  Apollonia,  to  say  nothing  of  American 
eccentricities.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  men  might 
possibly  even  guard  their  names  more  jealously  from  every 
stain  and  .bad  repute  if  they  gave  more  attention  to  their 
meaning  and  their  history.  But  as  we  have,  unfortunately, 
little  to  say  when  our  names  are  given  us,  we  ought  at 
least  be  permitted  to  change  them  when  they  are  too  atro- 
cious and  prove  intolerable  burdens.  First  names  can 
generally  be  hidden  under  mysterious  initials,  but  the 
family  name  asserts  its  rights,  and  may  prejudice  all  the 
world  against  the  unfortunate  owner. 

We  cannot  help  sympathizing,  therefore,  with  poor  Mr. 
Death  of  Massachusetts,  who  petitioned  the  legislative  body 


138  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

of  his  State  to  change  his  name  to  Dickinson,  and  we  do 
so  all  the  more  because  malicious  Fate  would  have  it  that 
the  member  who  presented  his  petition  was  a  Mr.  Graves. 
A  Mr.  Wormwood  supported  his  more  ambitious  desire  to 
assume  the  name  of  Washington  by  the  argument  that 
"  no  member  of  taste  would  oppose  his  request,"  and  that 
"  the  intense  sufferings  of  so  many  years  of  wormwood 
existence  deserved  the  compensation  of  a  great  and  glo- 


CHAPTER  IX. 

HOW  NOUNS   ARE   MADE. 
♦'  Non  enim  ut  fuligi  nascuntiir  Tocabula."  —  Uure, 

Words  share  the  dualism  that  seems  to  pertain  not  to 
human  nature  alone,  but  to  pervade  the  whole  creation. 
As  man  consists  of  a  heaven-born  mind  and  a  body,  of  the 
earth,  earthy,  so  words  also  have  their  immortal  part,  an 
idea,  and  their  perishing,  changeable  body,  the  outward 
form  and  its  sound.  The  ever-active  mind  of  man  creates 
incessantly  new  ideas,  and  the  frail  and  subtle  material  in 
which  they  are  clothed  and  of  which  the  body  of  all  words 
consist,  the  air  we  breathe,  suffers  a  thousand  varying  influ- 
ences from  outside.  Thus  words  have  a  physical  history 
which  explains  the  growth  of  their  form,  as  well  as  a  men- 
tal history  belonging  to  the  idea  they  represent.  Both  go, 
of  course,  hand  in  hand,  though  but  too  often  the  clumsy, 
awkward  body  remains  far  behind  the  subtle  idea,  and  is 
not  unfrequently  left  in  the  end  an  empty  shell,  a  mere  sign 
and  symbol.  Of  no  class  of  words  is  this  more  true  than 
of  the  names  of  objects,  as  they  are  necessarily  the  oldest, 
and,  with  the  verb,  the  only  essential  part  of  speech  ;  these 
two,  noun  and  verb,  sufficing  to  constitute  language.  To 
name  an  object,  by  a  noun,  and  to  affirm  something  con- 
cerning that  object,  by  a  verb,  is  all  that  is  needed  to  convey 
thought  from  one  mind  to  another.  The  other  parts  of 
speech  are  mere  luxuries  and  asses'  bridges  ;  they  grow  in 
number  and  importance,  as  articles  of  luxury  grow  with 
prospering  nations ;  but  when  passion  drives  our  thoughts 


140  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

at  a  tempest's  pace,  or  terror  chills  our  tongue,  the  master- 
words  alone  appear  and  are  found  amply  sufficient. 

Fortunately  we  have  in  English  the  rare  opportunity  of 
tracing  nouns  from  infancy  to  full  manhood  ;  we  can  follow 
the  varying  fate  of  some  with  unfailing  certainty  and  in 
unbroken  line,  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  Our  language 
is  just  pliant  enough  now  to  form  new  nouns  as  the  ne- 
cessity arises,  and  to  allow  us  to  watch  their  success  in  life. 
Some  come  upon  the  stage  with  a  dash  and  an  air  of 
triumph  which  soon  gives  way  to  utter  discomfiture,  and 
they  are  seen  no  more ;  others  creep  in  stealthily ;  they 
have  no  famous  poet  or  brilliant  essayist  for  their  godfather, 
but  they  do  their  duty  so  well,  and  are  such  useful  hewers 
of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  that,  before  we  are  well 
aware  of  it,  they  are  admitted  to  every  house,  and  finally 
hold  their  own  among  the  oldest  and  proudest  of  words. 

If  we  go  back,  for  the  purpose  of  thus  tracing  the  his- 
tory of  nouns  to  the  oldest  forms  of  English,  we  will  there 
find  the  method  of  forming  them  from  the  first  and  sim- 
plest elements.  A  single  vowel,  a,  served  in  primitive  times 
to  convey  the  idea  of  eternity  ;  it  has  since  grown  up  with 
our  people,  it  has  spread  out  and  is  now  known  as  aye  (for 
ever  and  aye),  still  bearing  its  striking  resemblance  to  the 
Greek  dct.  Two  vowels  joined  show  already  some  progress, 
as  in  the  ancient  word  ce  for  law ;  then  a  consonant  was 
added  to  a  vowel,  and  we  have  ac,  our  modern  oak^  but 
still  surviving  in  many  a  name,  as  in  Acland  and  Acton, 
the  town  and  the  land  of  oaks. 

It  is  not  to  be  presumed  that  these  most  simple  words 
should  have  long  existed  alone,  or  even  been  allowed  to 
retain  their  primitive  forms.  Some  were  lengthened  out ; 
in  other  cases,  from  rapidity  of  utterance,  convenience  or 
inattention,  two  were  run  together  so  as  to  form  one  word. 
The  latter  process  is  still  continually  going  on.  When  we 
first  hear  a  foreign  language  spoken,  the  most  striking  im- 
pression is  that  it  seems  to  be  all  one  word,  and  nothing  is 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  141 

more  difficult  for  the  ear  than  to  learn  how  to  divide  the 
continued  sound  correctly  into  words  and  syllables.  Even 
in  English,  certain  words  now  written  in  one  were  carefully 
separated  as  late  as  the  days  of  Byron,  and  others  are  now 
in  the  very  act  of  being  contracted.  We  derive  from  this 
experience  the  simple  law  that  every  English  noun  consist- 
ing of  more  than  one  syllable  has  no  longer  its  first  form, 
but  has  had  other  words  or  particles  added  to  the  original 
root  of  one  syllable. 

We  may  follow,  in  like  manner,  the  mental  process  by 
which  nouns  were  formed,  in  our  vernacular.  The  first  use 
of  language  was  always  and  everywhere  to  give  names  to 
material,  sensible  objects,  as  the  five  senses  are  after  all  the 
one  great  inlet  of  human  knowledge.  "  Nihil  in  oratione 
quod  non  prius  in  sensu"  is  a  dogma  of  practical  truth. 
Adam  proceeds  in  this  manner  in  the  Bible  narration,  and 
every  newborn  infant  does  it  afresh.  Gradually,  however, 
the  mind  becomes  more  active  in  itself  and  more  deeply 
interested  in  the  nature  of  these  tangible  objects,  first  ob- 
serves qualities,  color,  size,  life,  &c.,  in  them,  then  thinks  of 
them  abstractly,  aside  from  the  object  which  first  suggested 
them,  and  finally  gives  them  names.  Last  of  all  come 
abstract  nouns,  the  names  of  ideas,  which  have  neither  a 
substance  of  their  own  nor  any  connection  with  the  tangi- 
ble world.  Rude,  barbarous  races  are  almost  altogether 
without  this  class  of  nouns  ;  speculative  nations  admit  them 
in  burdensome  numbers. 

This  process  of  forming  nouns  is  by  no  means  exhausted 
in  the  modern  form  of  languages ;  in  none  perhaps  is  it 
completely  ended.  We  judge  so  not  from  abstract  reason- 
ing but  from  the  very  evident  fact  that  the  three  classes  we 
have  mentioned  are,  even  in  English,  not  yet  absolutely 
defined  and  separated  from  each  other.  Many  nouns  have 
yet,  with  us  also,  to  answer  for  an  abstract  idea,  and  at  the 
same  time  for  its  special  representative.  Youth  is  a  time 
of  life,  and  a  young  man ;  acauaintance  is  a  state  and  a 


142  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

person  ;  witness  means  as  much  the  evidence  given  as  the 
person  from  whom  it  is  elicited.  Every  now  and  then  we 
can  trace  the  gradual  transition,  as  in  the  word  fairy,  which 
was  formerly  used  only  like  its  parent /eene,  whilst  now  it 
is  also  employed  for  what  of  old  was  called  a /ay,  a  middle- 
being  of  Gothic  mythology,  as  in 

"  Delightedly  dwells  he  'mong  fays  and  talismans 

And  spirits." 

The  stock  of  English  nouns  in  use  at  present  compre- 
hends every  class  and  kind  of  words,  from  the  simplest  to 
the  doubly  compound,  from  the  original  form  to  one  which 
has  not  a  single  letter  left.  One  of  the  most  striking  pe- 
culiarities of  our  language  in  this  respect  is,  that  it  can  use 
any  word,  any  part  of  speech,  as  a  noun.  Large  numbers 
of  verbs  like  hate,  love,  fear,  turn,  draw,  &c.,  are,  without 
any  change,  used  as  nouns  also.  University  men  have  made 
us  familiar  with  "  the  little  yo,"  and  modern  authors,  espe- 
cially in  this  country,  have  multiplied  the  number  of  sub- 
stantives drawn  from  verbs  with  almost  appalling  license. 
Thus  we  read  of  a  hard  freeze,  a  fine  swim,  a  long  run,  a 
good  haul,  a  long  pull,  a  big  scare,  a  bold  dash,  a  long  talk, 
a  regular  flare-up,  a  ride,  2i  stroll,  and  a  saunter,  and  even 
of  a  soapy /ee/  in  Mineralogy. 

The  wealthy  of  the  land  show  us  "  a  splendid  turn-out^* 
whether  it  be  a  Brougham,  a  Clarence,  or  a  swift  Han- 
som, We  speak  familiarly  of  Philippics,  as  if  we  had  a 
Demosthenes  to  thunder  against  Philip  of  Macedon,  of 
simony,  bequeathed  to  us  by  Simon  Magus,  of  dunces,  the 
unworthy  representatives  of  worthy  Duns  Scotus,  of  an 
orreryj  so  called  after  their  first  patron,  the  Earl  of  Orrery 
and  Cork,  of  rhodomontades  after  the  famous  hero  of 
Ariosto,  of  Spensers,  Mackintoshes,  and  d '  Oyleys,  showing  us 
that  proper  names  furnish  an  abundance  of  common  nouns, 
to  which  they  have  been  godfathers. 

This  is  especially  the  case  with  the  names  of  foreign 
countries  and  cities,  which  have  added  largely  to  the  class 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.   >        143 

of  nouns  used  to  designate  materials  or  manufactured  arti- 
cles. Thus  the  towns  of  Calicut  (Calcutta)  and  Damascus 
have  given  us  Calico  and  Damask ;  from  Moussul  in  Asia 
Minor  we  have  Muslin  in  its  various  forms  of  spelling,  and 
from  Gaza,  probably  Gauze.  Dimity  does  not  come,  as  is 
generally  stated,  from  Damiette,  but  from  a  Greek  word, 
which  originally  meant  "two  threads."  For  Du  Cange 
quotes  an  ancient  writer  on  the  affairs  of  Sicily,  who  men- 
tions a  factory  in  the  island  which  produced  "  Aniita,  Dim- 
ita,  and  Trimita,"  as  also  "  Exhimita,".  made  thick  by  an 
abundance  of  thread,  and  thus  explains  to  us  the  different 
stuffs  made  up  respectively  of  one,  two,  three,  and  many 
threads.  While  chintz  finds  its  origin  in  the  Hindustanee 
word  cheent  or  cheet,  which  means  a  spotted  stuff,  cambric 
comes  from  the  town  of  Cambray,  diaper  from  d'Ypres,  and 
arras  from  the  city  of  that  name.  Cordova  in  Spain  has 
given  us  our  cordwainers,  Armenia  our  ermine,  Cyprus  our 
copper,  China  our  porcelain  of  that  name,  and  Creta  our 
crayon.  Indigo  is  so  called  as  an  Indian  dye  through  Indi- 
cus,  as  the  cherry  came  from  Cerasus,  and  the  peach  from 
Persicum  (malum).  Pergamum  in  Asia  gave  us,  indirectly, 
the  word  parchment,  and  Phasis  the  name  of  the  Phasian 
bird,  a  pheasant.  To  Morocco  we  owe  the  best  leather,  to 
Lazarus,  through  the  Italian,  our  but  half-naturalized  laza- 
retto, to  Livorno  the  Anglicized  Leghorn  hats,  and  to  the 
Croats  of  the  seventeenth  century,  through  the  French,  our 
cravats.  Baldaquin  comes  to  us  through  a  series  of  changes 
from  the  city  of  Bagdad,  known  to  the  Italians  at  one  time 
as  Baldacca,  and  in  the  adjective  form  Baldacchino,  be- 
cause canopies  were  generally  made  of  a  costly  stuff,  manu- 
factured in  that  Eastern  city,  and  known  even  in  England 
as  Baldach.  Varnish  is  traced  back  either  to  the  golden 
hair  of  Berenice,  or  to  the  city  of  that  name,  where  a  pecu- 
liarly beautiful,  amber-colored  nitre  was  found.  Worsted  is 
derived  from  no  foreign  country,  but  from  the  English 
town  of  Worstead,  where  woolen  goods  were  largely  manu- 


144  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

factured.  Weapons,  also,  take  their  names  from  places 
famous  for  producing  the  first  or  the  best  of  their  kind,  as 
Damascus  and  Toledo  blades,  bayonets  from  Bayonne,  and 
pistols  from  Pistoja.  Velvet  traces  its  origin  to  the  Italian 
word  velluto,  descriptive  of  the  peculiar  nature  of  its  sur- 
face, and  satin  from  the  Latin  seta,  which  subsequently 
formed  setinus.  The  word  dollar  has  an  obscure  beginning 
in  the  mines  of  the  little  town  of  Joachimsthal  (Valley  of 
St.  Joachim),  in  the  heart  of  Germany,  as  the  productive 
silver  mines  of  that  region  led  to  the  coining  of  a  large 
silver  coin,  which  from  the  place  was  called  the  Joachims- 
thaler.  The  uncouth  word  was  speedily  reduced,  in  Ger- 
man, to  Thaler,  which  is  now  the  name  of  the  coin  through- 
out German}',  and  then  Anglicized  into  dollar. 

"With  greater  license  still  the  English  takes  up  words  of 
any  kind  and  class,  and  transforms  them,  at  will,  into  nouns. 
Thus  Shakespeare,  using  his  language  with  masterly  indif- 
ference, says  in  King  Lear :  — 

"  Thou  losest  here,  a  better  where  to  find," 

and  elsewhere 

"  Henceforth  my  wooing  shall  be  expressed 
In  russet  yeas  and  honest  kersey  noesJ'^ 

There  is,  however,  some  limit  in  this  apparently  un- 
checked freedom,  for  good  taste  and  established  usage 
become  in  language  as  arbitrary  tyrants  as  fashion  in 
society.  Adjectives,  for  instance,  cannot  be  promiscuously 
raised  to  the  dignity  of  nouns.  We  speak  of  the  black, 
the  white,  and  the  native,  but  only  with  regard  to  man ; 
"  the  grey  I  own  "  can  only  be  said  of  a  horse,  and  the  main 
means  only  the  ocean. 

Others  again  are  limited  to  a  plural  meaning,  no  other 
reason  being  perceptible  than  the  dictates  of  usage.  The 
good  and  the  bad,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  wise  and  the 
learned,  the  quick  and  the  dead,  all  are  singular  forms 
applied   only  to  numbers  of  men.      In  the  ancients  and 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  145 

the  moderns,  the  noUes  and  the  commons,  the  form  goes  with 
the  meaning.  The  last  is  used  already  by  Shakespeare 
when  he  says, — 

"  Let  but  the  Commons  hear  this  testament," 

where  he  means,  of  course,  the  commonalty,  the  common 
people  and  not  the  House  of  Commons.  In  a  still  more 
whimsical  manner  we  find  some  adjectives,  when  used  as 
nouns,  invariably  accompanied  by  the  possessive  pronouns ; 
thus  we  only  speak  of  my  or  his  superior  and  inferior, 
junior,  senior,  and  equal.  Better  also  is  most  frequently 
thus  escorted,  although  not,  as  is  commonly  imagined,  lim- 
ited to  a  plural  meaning,  for  we  read  in  Shakespeare  : — 

"  The  Cardinal  is  not  my  better  in  the  field ; " 
and 

"  His  better  does  not  breathe  upon  the  earth ; " 

as  well  as 

"  If  our  betters  play  at  that  game."  —  Timon,  I.  2. 

Some  again  do  not  venture  forth,  as  nouns,  without  the  pro- 
tection of  an  additional  one,  as  when  we  mention  our  little 
ones  and  our  dear  ones.  Still  more  strictly  limited  is  the 
meaning  of  a  numerous  class,  each  of  which  is  but  applied 
to  a  special  subdivision ;  such  are  greens,  sweets,  bitters, 
eatables  and  drinkables,  movables,  odds,  &c.  Ben  Jonson 
already  says  — 

*'  Contraries  are  not  mixed."  (741.) 

And  in  the  "  Spectator  "  we  find  — 

"  Not  to  confine  itself  to  the  usual  objects  of  eatables  and  drinkables.''^ 

If  we  regard,  on  the  other  hand,  the  different  stages  of 
development  in  which  we  find  our  present  nouns,  it  ap- 
pears at  a  glance  that  they  still  represent  the  three  stages 
through  which  all  nouns  have  to  pass.  There  are  our  sim- 
ple nouns,  consisting  of  nothing  but  a  simple  root,  as  man. 
day,  or  house.  Then  we  have  derivatives,  which  boast  of 
a  root  adorned  by  a  little  syllable  added  before  or  after,  as 

ufiversity) 


146  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

in  become  and  winter.  We  have,  lastly,  compound  nouns, 
in  which  two  distinct  roots  have  combined  to  form  one 
word,  as  the  two  ideas  they  respectively  represent  have 
coalesced  into  one.  Such  are  housewife,  wristband,  &c. 
Simple  nouns,  which  have  really  no  element  but  a  single 
radical,  are  comparatively  few  in  number.  There  are  many 
nouns,  however,  which  appear  very  innocent  of  any  con- 
nection with  particles,  and  which  still,  when  examined  more 
closely,  have  to  acknowledge  their  borrowed  feathers.  For 
of  all  languages  the  English  has  allowed  its  derivative 
nouns  to  be  most  obscured  and  contracted,  thanks  to  the 
general  tendency  of  our  language  to  shorten  and  curtail  all 
apparent  superfluities.  "Words  like  sail,  fair,  soul,  main,  and 
stair,  seem  to  be  quite  simple  until  we  compare  them  with 
their  ancient  forms,  which  generally  still  survive  in  modem 
German,  and  then  find  them  to  consist  truly  of  two  sylla- 
bles, viz :  saegel,  faeger,  savol,  magen,  and  staeger.  Very 
rarely  the  full  and  the  contracted  form  continue  in  use,  side 
by  side,  as  in  our  havoc  and  hawk,  if  they  really  are  the 
same  word. 

The  most  fertile  of  derivative  syllables,  which  thus  serve 
to  make  new  nouns,  is  probably  er,  the  remnant  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  noun  wer,  sl  man,  and  thence  conveying  the 
idea  of  male  sex  and  male  agency  in  addition  to  that  ex- 
pressed by  the  root.  The  word  seems  to  have  belonged 
alike  to  almost  all  languages  ;  the  Sanscrit  virah  reappears 
in  the  Armorican  air  as  well  as  in  the  Celtic  fear.  Ver  is 
universal  throughout  the  North,  and,  as  Rask  tells  us,  found 
in  Runic  inscriptions  and  the  oldest  writings.  The  syllable 
er,  therefore,  occurs  in  all  Northern  European  languages 
now,  and  so  great  and  so  evident  is  its  convenience,  that  it 
holds  its  ground  in  our  own  idiom  in  spite  of  the  strong 
tendency  of  the  latter  to  rid  itself  of  all  grammatical  char- 
acteristics. The  very  fact  that  it  existed  in  all  the  idioms, 
Celtic,  Saxon,  and  French,  from  which  the  English  has 
drawn,  has  enabled  it  to  adapt  itself  to  so  many  different 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  147 

classes  of  words.  It  must  not  be  overlooked,  however, 
that  on  account  of  this  very  circumstance  it  has  not  always 
preserved  its  pure  form,  but  yielded  often  to  the  influence 
of  the  foreign  element,  with  which  it  has  been  combined. 
In  Scotland  we  meet  occasionally  with  the  full  form  of  the 
originally  wer^  as  in  lawwer.  Then  the  w  softened  into  y 
and  we  read  already  in  the  "  Chevy  Chase : "  — 

"  And  long  before  high  noon  they  had 
An  hundred  fat  buckes  slaine, 
Then  having  din'd,  the  drovyers  went 
To  rouze  the  deere  againe." 

Our  own  lawyer,  Sawyer  and  Bowyer,  bear  evidence  of  the 
same  change.  Reader  and  writer,  Jisher  and  fowler,  glover 
and  hatter,  hearer,  and  seer  with  its  special,  beautiful  mean- 
ing, are  old  Saxon  words  so  formed.  In  our  day  there  pre- 
vails a  fashion  to  make  such  nouns  from  verbs,  and  maker, 
founder,  and  doer,  are  of  comparatively  modern  origin. 
Beggar  and  sailor  are  due  to  the  same  process. 

The  Latin  tor  having  undergone  a  frequent  change  into 
eur  in  French,  words  derived  from  that  language  present 
a  strange  variety  of  spelling,  which  is  due  to  the  fact,  that 
er  has  since  been  continually  confounded  with  the  French 
eur  or  er.  Thus  we  have  now  actor  and  sponsor,  but  also 
volunteer,  auctioneer,  mutineer,  mountaineer,  muleteer,  huC' 
caneer,  and  pioneer  (from  the  Spanish  peon,  originally 
pedone,  men  on  foot  who  cleared  the  way  before  an  army 
of  knights)  ;  but  engineer  is  from  ingenieur  (ingeniator), 
and  chanticleer  from  chante  clair.  In  other  words  we  spell 
it  or,  as  in  bachelor  from  hachelier,  savior  from  sauveur  (sal- 
vator),  and  wrongly,  in  sailor.  Glazier,  hosier  and  spurrier, 
are  Saxon  words  with  French  terminations,  whilst  harrier, 
carrier,  courtier,  and  courier,  have  nothing  at  all  to  do  with 
the  Saxon  er.  Soldier  has  assumed  it,  w^  know  not  how, 
although  it  comes  originally  from  solidariuSf  the  man  who 
received  for  his  fighting-wages  a  solidus  (nummus),  the 
standard  coin  of  the  Romans.     Collier,  on  the  other  hand. 


148  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

looks  quite  foreign,  and  is  yet  nothing  but  good  Saxon  coal 
and  wer,  coalman,  just  as  we  say  milkman ;  it  was  in  old 
writings  called  colger,  and  hence  the  contraction.  In  the 
same  relation  to  each  other  stand  hostler^  from  the  ancient 
hospitaller,  a  word  sadly  reduced  alike  in  form  and  in  mean- 
ing, and  the  curious  word  brother^  literally  one  of  the  same 
brood.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  that  in  the  course 
of  time,  especially  under  Norman  influence,  the  force  and 
meaning  of  this  little  syllable  should  have  often  been  for- 
gotten, a  circumstance  which  led  to  its  occasional  repetition 
in  the  same  word.  Thus  we  have  fruiter-er,  and  sorcerer 
from  the  French  sorcier  (sortiarius).  Shakespeare  uses 
for  our  poulterer  the  simple  form  poulter  ;  and  when  Henry 
VIII.  was  visited  by  Charles  V.,  the  accounts  had  it :  — 
"  Item,  to  appoint  four  pullers  to  serve  for  the  said  persons 
of  all  manner  of  pultryP  The  same  word  occurs  in  Stat.  2 
and  3  Edward  VI.  ch.  25,  and  Henry  VIII.  incorporated  the 
"  Poulters'  Company."  Caterer  is  a  mere  mis-pronunciation 
of  the  word  acheter  in  days  when  ch  was  sounded  like  k, 
and  Rocheby  was  the  name  of  modem  Rugby,  Saunterer 
only  looks  like  a  word  derived  in  this  manner,  but  it  really 
comes  from  Sainte  Terre,  and  was  a  name  given  to  those 
who,  after  the  Crusades,  went  to  the  Holy  Land  without 
any  definite  business,  which  finally  became  equal  to  going 
no  where  in  particular.  In  other  words  the  er  is  purely 
French,  as  in  :  — 


barber, 

from 

barbier, 

from 

barbarius ; 

river, 

u 

riviere, 

(( 

ripuaria; 

prayer, 

(( 

prifere, 

u 

precaria ; 

danger, 

(( 

danger, 

(( 

damnuarium ; 

manner, 

u 

mani^re, 

(( 

maneries ; 

matter, 

u 

mati6re, 

(( 

materia. 

gardener, 

it 

jardinier. 

Draper  comes  to  us  from  the  French  for  cloth,  drap,  which  we 
preserve  in  drab,  the  original  color  of  cloth.  Grocer  was  at 
first  grosser,  from  gros,  meaning  a  man  who  sold  by  the  gross, 
although  curiously  enough  they  were  formerly  called  pep- 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  149 

'  perers.  Statutes,  prescribing  that  English  merchants  must 
choose  one  ware  or  merchandise  and  deal  in  no  other,  say, 
"  De  ceo  que  les  Marchaundy  nomer  Grossers  engrossent  totes 
manieres  des  marchandises  vendahles'^  Stationers  had  at 
first  nothing  to  do  with  paper  or  printing,  but  derived 
their  name  from  their  regular  station,  which  distinguished 
them  from  the  mass  of  itinerant  vendors.  Butchers,  from 
the  French  touchers,  were  long  called  hochers.  "  A  hocher 
that  selleth  swyne's  flesh  that  is  anywise  mesele,  corrupt  or 
in  morrayne "  is  threatened  by  law  (Stowe,  Vol.  II.  page 
445),  and  WicklifFe  says,  "  Al  thing  that  is  seeld  in  the 
hocheri,''  (1  Cor.  x.  25,)  using  it  for  our  "  shambles."  Skel- 
ton  prefers  the  French  form  and  says  — 

"  For  drede  of  the  Boucher''s  dog 
Wold  worry  them  like  a  hog." 

We  ought  not  to  forget  that  the  name  of  Boucher  is  derived 
in  a  far  more  honorable  way,  for  Saintfoix  tells  us  in  his 
"  Historical  Essays,"  that  "  anciently  Le  Boucher  was  a 
glorious  surname  given  to  a  general  after  a  victory  in 
acknowledgment  of  the  carnage  which  he  had  caused."  It 
is  a  pity  the  fact  should  have  been  forgotten,  whilst  on  the 
other  hand  we  are  more  grateful  for  such  oblivion  in  the 
case  of  Fletcher,  the  original  form  of  which  was  in  England 
Flesher.  The  origin  of  the  name  of  Tucker  is  quite  peculiar. 
It  is  derived  from  the  town  of  Toucques  in  Normandy, 
near  Abbeville,  whence  the  manufacture  of  cloth  was  first 
brought  to  Bristol  and  the  West  of  England.  In  Stat.  2 
and  3  Philip  and  Mary,  ch.  12,  1555,  the  cloth  workers  are 
called  tuckers  and  the  mills  tucking  mills.  Currier  comes 
from  the  French  cuir  (corium),  and  so  it  is  spelt  in  Stowe. 
"  Also  the  assize  of  a  coryour  is  that  he  cory  no  manner 
of  ledder,"  and  Wickliffe  has  *'  This  is  herboride  at  a  man 
symount  couriour^  Acts  x.  6.  Usher  is  the  Anglicized 
huissier,  and  among  proper  names  we  find  Jenner,  the  old 
form  of  joiner,  Butler  or  Boteler  from  bottler,  and  Milner 
from  the  Anglo-Saxon  miln,  our  mill.    Nothing  but  the  for- 


150  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

cible  law  of  analogy,  the  power  of  the  majority  to  coerce  the 
minority  in  language,  can  explain  why  the  Latin  charta 
should  be  charter  and  the  Spanish  daga  our  dagger.  It  is 
a  clear  abuse,  on  the  other  hand,  where  the  truly  masculine 
er  has  been  added  to  feminine  nouns,  as  in  drake  from 
andrake,  the  German  enterich,  in  gander  from  Gans,  now 
goose,  and  in  widower. 

In  many  words  the  syllable  er  has  met  very  strange 
company ;  and  thus  it  can  hardly  feel  quite  at  home  by  the 
side  of  a  Latin  subjunctive  or  the  name  of  a  Spanish  city. 
Still,  such  is  its  fate  in  Sumner  and  cordwainer.  The 
former  is  derived  from  suhmoneas  (thou  shalt  summon),  the 
order  given  to  a  certain  officer  to  cite  delinquents  before 
an  ecclesiastical  court.  From  the  first  word  of  his  order, 
used  like  the  lawyer's  Ji.  fa.  or  the  statesman's  haheas  cor- 
pus, he  was  probably  once  called  a  suhnoneas-er,  though 
the  earliest  mention  in  the  Coventry  Mysteries  gives  him 
already  a  more  modern  name  — 

"  Sir  Somnor  in  hast  wend  thou  thi  way 
Byd  Josef  and  his  wyff  be  name 
At  the  coorte  to  apper  this  day,"  ■ 

whilst    Chaucer   writes   it   sumptuously   Sompnoure.     The 

other  word,  cordwainer,  takes  its  origin  from  the  city  of 

Cordova  and  its  celebrated  goatskin-leather.     The  same 

Mysteries  say  — 

"  Of  ffine  Cordewan  a  goodly  peyre  of  long  pikyd  schon, 
Hosyn  enclosyd  of  the  most  costlyous  cloth  of  crenscyn." 

As  the  famous  material  is  now  only  manufactured  in 
Morocco,  that  city  in  its  turn  gives  its  present  name  to  this 
kind  of  leather.  Another  city  gave  us  anciently  Eoamer, 
a  man  who  makes  a  pilgrimage  to  Rome,  the  same  as  the 
Italian  Rom(5o,  which  still  survives  in  our  verb  to  roam.  A 
ludicrous  mistake  is  hidden  in  the  word  bumper.  Once 
upon  a  time  the  great  toast  of  every  feast  was  le  hon  pere, 
meaning  of  course  the  Holy  Father,  and  as  it  was  generally 
the  final  toast  it  was  considered  that  the  glasses  would  be 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  151 

desecrated  by  being  ever  again  used.  The  contraction  of 
Bon  Pere  into  Bumper  hardly  requires  the  apology  of  a 
protracted  feast;  but  being  accompanied  by  this  general 
smash  it  was  as  frequently  designated  as  la  Brise  Generate^ 
the  ancestor  of  that  "  General  Breese  "  to  whom,  as  to  a 
famous  warrior,  many  an  enthusiastic  toast  has  been  drunk 
since  the  earlier  popes. 

The  corresponding  feminine  termination  of  our  language 
is  the  much  rarer  ster,  by  some  traced  back  to  the  Sanscrit 
stre,  meaning  woman.  Older  authors  abound  in  words 
formed  by  such  means.  Sir  John  Mandeville,  and  others 
after  him,  speak  of  tomhestres  and  similar  professions,  which 
by  charter  or  monopoly  were  practised  by  women  only. 
At  a  later  date,  however,  men  began  to  invade  these 
branches  of  industry  and  yet  to  retain  the  female  appella- 
tion for  some  time.  After  a  time  the  masculine  terms 
drove  the  old  ones  out  of  the  language,  even  as  the  men 
had  driven  the  women  out  of  the  employments.  The  fact 
is,  that  in  oldest  times  war  prevailed  everywhere,  and 
almost  constantly,  and  claimed  for  the  service  all  able- 
bodied  men.  When  peace  was  restored,  large  numbers  of 
the  latter  came  home  and  turned  out  the  women  who  had 
in  the  mean  time  filled  their  places.  Hence  we  have  in 
modern  English  the  forms  in  -estre  yet,  but  without  the 
original  meaning.  This  transfer  from  the  feminine  to  the 
masculine  gender  is  all  the  more  easily  explained,  as  there 
are  nearly  a  hundred  words  in  -ter  derived  from  foreign 
sources,  and  all  masculine,  which  naturally  aided  in  effacing 
the  original  grammatical  force  inherent  to  -ster.  Thus  we 
find  already  in  "  Piers'  Ploughman,"  (434)  — 

"  Baksteres  and  Brewesteres 
And  Bochiers  manye ; 
Wollen  Wehbesteres 
And  Weveres  of  lynnen," 

without  any  indication  of  sex  or  gender.  Songster  is  one 
of  the  few  words  of  this  class  which,  even  in  our  day,  may 


152  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

be  used  for  both  genders,  although  songstress  occurs  not 
unfrequently.  To  hawk  goods  about  was  the  privilege  of 
men  Who  were  then  called  hawkers,  and  of  women  who 
became  hawkestres,  from  which  our  huckster.  In  like 
manner  women  long  monopolized  the  right  to  brew  beer, 
and  hence  tapster  is  used  by  Chaucer  as  another  word  for 
hostess,  and  Shelton  says  — 

"  A  Uippystre  like  a  lady  bright."  —  I.  239. 

Whether  women  ever  drove  teams  by  the  same  right  is 
not  ascertained,  but  in  the  days  of  Henry  VIII.  they  were 
certainly  still  called  teamsters.  The  much  abused  spinster 
derives  her  name  from  the  legal  fiction  which  presumes  all 
elderly  unmarried  women  to  spin,  as  well  as  all  good  wives 
to  weave,  the  words  weave,  woof,  and  wife  all  coming  from 
the  same  common  ancestor.  It  seems  a  delicate  irony  that 
the  bar  of  the  inn  should  have  been  transferred  to  the  court- 
room, and  that  thus  the  barrister  still  bears  the  feminine 
ending  under  his  wig  and  gown.  In  one  word  at  least  the 
Saxon  'Stre  has  joined  a  Danish  word.  This  is  the  case  in 
Danish  svein,  the  swain  of  our  poets,  the  boatswain  on  board 
ship  ;  the  feminine  was  made  as  sweoster,  and  has  given  us 
our  modern  sister. 

Large  numbers  of  such  words  are  used  as  patronymics 
for  men,  because  these  are  generally  derived  from  male  and 
not  from  female  ancestors.  Thus  we  have  Webster  from  web 
and  weave,  and  Brewster,  which  still  survives  as  a  common 
noun  in  Hull,  where  in  public  court  publicans  are  licensed 
and  advertised  by  that  name.  Many  of  these  names,  how- 
ever, are  no  doubt  to  be  ascribed  originally  to  cases  in 
which  the  father  did  not  choose  to  acknowledge  the  pater- 
nity, according  to  the  old  saying,  "  Oui  pater  est  populus 
non  habet  fatremP  In  old  times  it  is  by  no  means  rare  to 
find  names  pointing  to  the  conduct  or  the  character  of  the 
mother,  who  founded  a  family.  Thus,  William  the  Conqueror 
boastfully  used  his  name  of  Bastard,  and   even  in  lower 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  153 

ranks  we  meet  frequently  with  names  like  Leeman,  some- 
times changed  into  Lemon,  Hussy,  Par  amove,  and  Trollops  ; 
of  this  kind  is  also  Baxter,  which  comes  from  bakestre,  the 
ks  being  changed  into  x,  just  as  cockscomb  is  now  coxcomb, 
and  pokkes  are  now  pox  in  small-pox.  Bakestre  also  is  still 
used  in  some  parts  of  Scotland  for  baker.  Wboster  is  from 
the  happy  profession  of  wooing,  as  Songster  from  singing ; 
the  humble  work  of  thatching  roofs  has  giv^n  us  Thaxter  ; 
and,  according  to  Mr.  Lower's  ingenious  suggestion,  the  still 
harder  work  imposed  upon  women  engaging  themselves 
by  the  day,  the  name  of  Dexter  from  daegestre.  Foster  is 
the  same  as  Forster  from  the  fuller  forester,  though  occa- 
sionally it  seems  to  have  been  derived  from  foodster,  as  in 
foster-mother.  Dempster  comes  from  deeming,  the  Saxon 
word  for  judging ;  hence  the  judges  of  Jersey  and  the  Isle 
of  Man  are  still  called  Deemsters,  whilst  unfortunately  in 
Scotland  the  legal  name  for  the  common  hangman  was  for- 
merly Dempster. 

Occasionally  we  meet  with  regular  forms,  representing 
both  genders.  Thus  we  have  Weaver  and  Webster,  Fibber  — 
used  by  Thackeray  in  '*  Vanity  Fair "  —  and  Fibster,  and 
Singer  and  Songster.  The  two  words  Younker  and  Young- 
ster, originally  standing  in  the  same  simple  relation  to  each 
other,  are  now  used,  the  first  with  contempt,  the  second  for 
a  young  man,  having  its  meaning  transferred  from  one  sex 
to  the  other. 

The  Scotch  seem  to  have  a  peculiar  preference  for  this 
ending,  for  we  find  among  them  a  large  number  of  words 
in  ster,  not  used  in  England,  such  as  brandster,  bangster 
(from  bang!),  dy  ester,  landmetstre,  maw  ster,  kemster,  (wool- 
carder)  and  cogster  (flax-breaker.)  On  the  other  hand  we 
notice,  since  the  days  of  the  "  Spectator,"  which  uses  roadster, 
a  disposition  to  use  -ster  as  an  expression  of  contempt, 
perhaps  from  an  instinctive  association  with  the  Latin  aster 
in  poetaster.  Thus  we  use  punster  and  fibster,  gamester  and 
trickster. 


154  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

As  soon  as  the  original  meaning  of  -ster  was  lost  to  the 
perception  of  the  mass  of  the  people,  there  arose  a  ten- 
dency to  add  another  feminine  termination  for  the  better 
expression  of  the  gender.  Although,  therefore,  Ben  Jon- 
son  still  uses  both  seamster  and  songster  of  women,  we  find 
the  French  termination  esse  added  to  the  former,  as  seam- 
stress, as  early  as  1699,  and  Thompson  speaks  already  of  a 
songstress.  Upholster,  from  upholder,  is  an  older  form  than 
either. 

This  same  termination,  -ess,  the  representative  of  the 
Latin  -ix,  and  surviving  in  executrix  and  the  rare  directrix, 
is,  of  course,  a  gift  of  our  Norman  masters,  but  never  very 
freely  used  in  English,  and  applied  to  but  few  Saxon  roots. 
In  some  words  it  has  almost  vanished  in  the  process  of 
being  Anglicized,  as  in  nourrice  (nutrix),  which  we  now 
call  nurse  ;  in  others,  even  in  foreign  words,  it  has  been 
entirely  dropped,  as  in  the  once  generally  used  cousiness. 
We  find  it,  therefore,  although  an  important  feminine  end- 
ing of  our  language,  most  frequently  in  pure  Latin  and 
French  words,  as  in  peeress,  heiress,  lioness,  and  princess, 
which,  by  the  way,  is  by  some  learned  men  considered  the 
only  word  in  English  with  an  accent  not  on  its  legitimate 
syllable,  the  radical.  '  The  exception  is  made,  it  is  said,  in 
order  to  distinguish  it  from  the  plural  of  prince.  It  is  not 
quite  clear  why  this  syllable,  among  so  many  of  its  kind, 
should  have  been  so  particularly  unfortunate  as  not  to 
harmonize  with  the  Saxon  character  of  the  language.  It 
cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  older  authors  used  it  fre- 
quently and  fondly  in  cases  in  which  it  is  now  utterly 
unknown.  In  Wickliffe's  New  Testament,  we  find  spou' 
sesse,  cosinesse,  synneress,  friendess,  servantess,  and  leperess. 
Bishop  Fisher's  works  abound  with  saintesses.  Milton  has 
auditress,  cateress,  chantress,  and  tyranness,  whilst  in  Shake- 
speare we  meet  with  cloisteress,  and  fornicatress.  Sterne 
uses  deaness,  and  Addison  detractress.  All  these  forms  are 
unknown  to  our  generation.     A  curious  word  of  this  class 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  155 

is  derived  from  the  French  lavandiere,  a  washer-woman, 
which  first  gave  us  lavender;  from  this  a  new  feminine 
was  made,  in  a  contracted  form,  belonging  to  the  days  when 
V  and  u  were  written  alike,  the  modern  laundress,  and  from 
this  again  an  artificial  masculine  launderer.  From  negro 
and  votary  we  obtain,  with  a  loss  of  the  final  vowel,  our 
negress  and  votaress,  and  some  will  have  it  that  lad  made, 
once  upon  a  time,  a  feminine  lad'dess,  which  subsequently 
shrunk  into  simple  lass. 

A  still  rarer  termination  of  this  class  is  the  ancient  -in, 
commonly  traced  back  to  the  Northern  cvin,  a  woman,  from 
which  our  forefathers'  quean,  and  our  own  queen.  It  was 
formerly  much  employed,  and  is  in  German  still  used,  as  the 
principal  feminine  ending ;  in  modern  English  it  is,  how- 
ever, scarcely  ever  met  with.  The  Scotch  carlin,  the  fem- 
inine of  carl  or  churl,  is  well  known  through  Burns'  — 

"  There  were  five  carlins  in  the  South, 
That  fell  upon  a  scheme, 
To  send  a  lad  to  London  town, 
To  bring  them  tidings  heme." 

The  gyre-carline  of  Scotland  is  nothing  less  than  the  mother 
of  witches,  of  whom  the  Ballad  of  Glenfinlas  sings : 

"  Thair  dwelt  ane  grit  Gyre-  Carline  in  auld  Betokio-bour, 
That  livit  upoun  Christiane  mene's  flesche." 

It  is  curious  that  this  strange-sounding  word  is,  in  reality, 
the  same  word  as  our  familiar  girl,  the  latter  leing  nothing 
more  than  the  contracted  form  of  ceorl-in,  cin-in,  i.  e.,  a  lit- 
tle churl,  and  originally  in  old  English,  of  both  genders.  We 
are  unfortunately  more  familiar  with  a  vixen,  a  name  which 
hides  to  the  superficial  observer  its  connection  with  fox,  from 
which  it  is  derived  by  a  change  of  vowel  asjilli/  is  from  foal. 
Maiden  is  suspected  of  being  formed  by  the  aid  of  -in,  as 
maegd  was  in  Anglo-Saxon  used  for  both  genders.  The 
adopted  titles  of  Margravine,  Palsgravine,  and  Landgravine 
have,  however,  nothing  to  do  with  the  derivative  syllable ; 
they  are  merely  English  imitations  of  the  German  Grafinn, 


156  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

whilst  heroine,  which  is  often  counted  in  under  this  head,  is 
pure  Greek  {rjpioLvrj.) 

Intimately  connected  with  these  means  of  forming  nouns 
expressive  of  sex,  are  similar  ones  employed  to  convey  the 
idea  of  diminution.  Unfortunately,  the  English  language 
possesses  but  few  of  these,  which  deprives  it  of  the  many 
charms  and  endearing  expressions,  for  which  German  and 
especially  the  Sclavonic  languages  are  so  famous.  It  seems 
as  if  the  Englishman's  national  reluctance  to  let  the  world 
become  aware  of  his  inward  feelings  —  that  apparent  cold- 
ness which  makes  him  in  the  eyes  of  foreigners  the  most 
reserved  and  least  amiable  of  men  —  had  affected  the  lan- 
guage also.  Those  that  we  possess  are  chiefly  of  Saxon 
origin;  there  are  a  few  we  owe  to  the  French,  but  not  one 
has  survived  from  the  Latin. 

The  oldest  of  all,  if  we  may  judge  from  its  absence  in 
Scotch,  and  most  probably  of  Frisian  origin,  is  the  word 
kin,  closely  connected,  though  probably  not  identical  with 
the  ancient  cyn,  our  modern  kith  and  km.  The  transition 
from  that  which  is  not  the  thing  itself  but  only  akin  to  it,  to 
the  idea  of  diminution,  is  common  to  all  languages.  Thus 
we  use  lambkin  and  catkin.  Mannikin  is  both  the  lay  figure 
of  the  artist  and  the  dwarf  in  actual  life,  which  latter  meaning 
agrees  with  the  Latin  homunciones  and  the  Italian  name 
Piccoluomini,  famous  in  history.  Minnikin  does  not,  like 
the  former,  come  from  man,  but  from  the  same  root  with 
Latin  minus  and  German  minder,  which  reappears  in  minx 
and  minion.  As  we  have  obtained  Alaric  from  the  German 
Ulrich,  so  we  take  their  word  Gurke  and  make  from  it  our 
diminutive  gerkin.  Jerkin,  on  the  other  hand,  is  from  the 
Frisian-Dutch  jurk,  a  frock  or  short  jacket ;  bumpkin,  from 
the  Dutch  boo7n,  our  beam,  means  not  only  a  man  of  small 
sense,  whom,  substituting  block  for  boom,  we  oflen  call  a 
blockhead,  as  the  Spaniards  call  him  a  Juez  de  palo,  but  is 
even  now  used  in  its  original  signification,  as  a  naval  term 
to  designate  a  bar  of  timber.     Pipkin  is  a  little  pipe,  such 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  157 

as  contains  madeira,  and  hence  often,  in  the  descending 
scale,  nothing  more  than  a  little  pot ;  finikin  comes  in  like 
manner  from  fine,  ^i\&  firkin  from  four,  meaning  the  fourth 
of  a  barrel,  as  farthing  meant  originally  the  fourth  of  a 
penny.  Monikin  is  a  malformation  from  monkey,  as  Malkin 
is  from  Mary,  whilst  the  diminutive  of  Lady  in  the  sense  of 
the  Holy  Virgin,  has  given  rise  to  the  oath  "  By  our  Lakin.'' 
In  like  manner  arose  "  God's  hodykin  "  or  "  Ods  hodikins"  and 
even  "  Ods  pitykins"  as  we  find  it  in  Shakespeare.  The  only 
important  case  in  which  kin  has  been  added  to  a  foreign 
word  is  napkin,  which  contains  the  old  Frisian  word  tacked 
on  to  the  French  la  nappe,  from  the  Latin  mappa,  which 
originally  meant  any  cloth,  and  hence  is  still  the  common 
name  for  handkerchief  in  Scotland,  in  the  same  manner  in 
which  it  is  used  by  Shakespeare  in  "  Othello." 

Perhaps  quite  as  old  is  our  y,  which  appears  in  Scotch 
exclusively  as  ie,  and  hence  has  produced  so  great  and  un- 
pleasant variety  in  the  spelling  of  proper  names.  We  have 
Betty  and  Betsey,  Billy  and  Barney,  (from  Bernard,)  Molly 
and  Fanny,  Sally  and  Sadie,  the  latter  already  pure  Scotch. 
The  Scotch  have  many  more,  and  add  to  Willie,  Davie,  Peg- 
gie, Tibbie  and  Annie,  also  lassie  and  laddie,  daddie  and  wifie, 
even  stemie,  coatie,  and  housie.  Occasionally  they  love,  we 
know  not  why,  to  insert  an  uk  before  the  ie,  and  thus  Whitelaw 
among  his  Scotch  songs  has  one  called  "  The  wee  wifukie  ;  " 
and  Burns  uses  droppukie,  housukie,  and  Bessukie.  Their 
number  in  English  is  much  smaller,  and  some  seem  to  have 
been  lost  more  recently,  for  in  Shakespeare  we  find  repeat- 
edly county,  for  little  count  (Romeo,  IIL  5,  and  alias), 
which  is  now  no  longer  in  use.  Ninny  and  noddy  occurs 
but  rarely  now  in  comparison  with  older  authors  ;  dummy 
is  from  thumb,  and  granny  from  grandame,  formed  like 
beldame.  Baby  is  of  course  from  babe,  but  its  meaning  is 
modern  ;  for  formerly  it  meant  pictures  in  books  as  in  these 
lines :  — 


168  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

"  We  gaze  but  on  babies  and  the  cover, 
The  gaudy  and  flowered  edges  painted  over, 
And  never  further  for  our  lesson  look 
Within  the  volume  of  this  various  book." 

Sylvester  Dubarlas,  ed.  London  1621,  p.  285. 

Another  diminutive,  which  is  much  more  popular  on  the 
northern  side  of  the  Tweed  than  south  of  it,  is  -och^  which 
occurs  hut  in  a  few  words  in  English.  Thus  we  have  hill- 
ock and  bullock  ;  paddock  means  both  a  small  enclosure  and 
a  toad,  derived  in  the  latter  case  from  the  Dutch  padde,  the 
Anglo-Saxon  pada.  Hummock  is  from  hump,  buttock  from 
the  French  bout,  the  end,  and  ruddock  represents  the  little 
red  one,  viz :  Robin  Red-breast.  In  Scotland,  on  the  con- 
trary, ock  is  still  used  as  a  common  diminutive,  and  occurs 
in  wifock  and  mannock,  in  laddock  and  lassock,  in  willock 
and  mannock.  It  is  not  improbable  that  this  same  termina- 
tion, so  fertile  in  names  like  Davock,  Jamock,  Bessock,  and 
Jeanock,  may  have  softened  into  the  above-mentioned  uk 
under  the  influence  of  the  affectionate  -le,  which  has  been 
added.  Names  in  -ock  are  more  common ;  Baldwin  has 
given  us  Baldock,  Paul,  as  has  been  mentioned  before.  Poll- 
ock, and  finally  Polk ;  Matthew  is  often  Mattock.  Care  must 
be  had,  however,  not  to  attribute  all  similar  names  to  the 
same  origin,  for  Bowcock,  which  resembles  the  class  very 
much,  is  the  Anglicized  Beau  Coq  of  the  Normans  ;  Have- 
lok  is  a  pure  Danish  name,  and  Gavelok  is  derived  from 
the  Anglo-Saxon  gaveluce,  as  in  the  verse  — 

"  Gavelickes  also  thike  flowe 
So  gnattes,  ichich  avowe." 

Arthour  and  Merlin,  p.  338. 

Our  Anglo-Saxon  fathers  have  bequeathed  us  their  favor- 
ite -ing,  which  originally  expressed  descent,  as  in  the  great 
name  of  their  Aethelings,  the  sons  of  the  noble,  and  only 
secondarily  acquired  the  power  of  diminution.  The  Ger- 
mans also  have  their  kindred  -ung,  and  the  connection  of 
this  syllable  with  our  young  is  not  to  be  doubted.  In 
ancient  times  it  often  meant  simply  son,  and  already,  in 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  159 

824,  we  read  of  ^'•Eadherht  Eadgaring''  (son  of  Edgar),  and 
"  Aethelheah  JSsm7ig  "  (son  of  Esna).  Hence  it  served  often 
to  form  patronymics,  many  of  which  survive,  like  Manning, 
Dunning,  Browning,  Whiting,  Waring,  and  Bering.  Herring 
is  derived  from  here,  the  German  Heer,  a  host,  and  ex- 
pressive of  the  number  and  order  in  which  the  enormous 
shoals  of  herrings  arrive  in  English  waters.  It  is  curious 
to  notice  how  this  syllable  has  been  used  in  the  names  of 
English  coins.  Penning,  from  which  our  penny,  may  be 
from  pan,  the  form  of  the  ancient  Bractata,  which  resembled 
hollow  pans,  and  were  first  known  in  the  lands  of  Ina,  king 
of  Wessex,  in  688.  Four  of  them  made  a  shilling,  literally 
a  small  shield  or  coat  of  arms,  exactly  as  the  French  ecu 
comes  from  the  Latin  scutum,  still  called  in  Italian  a  scudo. 
The  full  word  penning  has  been  shortened  into  penny,  and 
when  Edward  T.  reduced  its  weight  to  a  standard  of  thirty- 
two  grains  of  wheat,  taken  from  the  middle  of  the  ear,  it 
gave  its  name  to  a  pennyweight.  Before  that  king  each 
coin  had  been  marked  with  a  cross  so  as  to  admit  of  its 
being  easily  and  justly  cut  into  four  quarters,  and  hence  the 
farthing  or  fourth-ing  of  those  days.  To  avoid  fraud,  how- 
ever, Edward  I.  caused  round  pieces  to  be  coined,  especially 
for  half  and  quarter  pennies.  Hence  the  sad  degradation  of 
the  farthing,  which  is  now  the  fourth  part  of  a  penny,  whilst 
formerly  it  was  the  same  fraction  of  a  gold  noble.  Stat. 
9  Henry  V.  and  Stat.  2,  ch.  7  (1421),  say,  "that  the  king 
do  to  be  ordained  good  and  just  weight  of  the  noble,  the 
half  noble  and  \h&  farthing  of  noble."  This  was  done,  there- 
fore, precisely  in  the  same  manner  in  which  the  Roman 
quadrans  was  made  to  express  the  fourth  part  of  an  as. 

It  must  not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  every  now  and 
then  the  termination  -ing  appears  also  as  a  mere  augmen- 
tative, after  the  manner  in  which  -ain  was  added  to  French 
words.  For  as  mount  made  mountain,  and  ia\mi,  fountain, 
so  even  makes  evening,  and  morn,  morning. 

The  diminutive  -ling  has  also  passed  through  two  distinct 


160  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

stages,  expressing  at  first  simply  small  size,  and  then  pass- 
ing into  the  idea  of  subjection.  Words  of  the  former  kind 
are  our  seedling,  nurseling,  stripling,  and  handing,  from  the 
band  in  which  children  were  wont  to  be  swathed-  In  ani- 
mals it  indicates  with  smallness  also  youth,  as  in  yearling, 
nestling,  starling,  groundling,  (of  fishes,)  duckling,  suckling, 
firstling,  and  even  of  trees,  sapling,  because  it  has  as  yet  no 
heart  but  only  sap.  Added  to  dear,  it  has  become,  as  darling, 
an  expression  of  tenderness.  The  transition  from  smallness 
of  body  to  smallness  of  soul  was  here  also  easy  enough ;  thus 
we  have  lordling,  underling,  and  worldling.  It  is  somewhat 
strange  that  hireling,  which  means,  just  like  soldatus,  one 
who  serves  for  coin  and  not  for  his  love  of  master  or  coun- 
try, should  now  be  used  with  contempt,  and  soldier  with 
honor.  Fondling  has  undergone  a  change  for  the  better. 
In  former  days  it  meant  a  weak  man,  a  fool,  and  in  this 
sense  it  is  used  in  Burton's  "  Anatomy,"  III.  3.  "  We  have 
many  such  fondlings,  that  are  their  wives'  pack-horses  and 
slaves."  The  origin  of  sterling  is  curious.  It  was  anciently 
written  Estarling,  and  meant  an  Easterling,  i.  e.,  a  man  from 
the  East,  especially  from  the  Hanse  towns.  These  thrifty 
merchants  introduced  their  pure  coinage  under  Richard  I., 
and  their  coins  being  called  after  them,  this  gave  rise  to 
the  expression  "  sterling  money."  Subsequently  the  name 
was  transferred  to  everything  in  its  way  excellent  and  gen- 
uine. The  loss  of  some  of  these  words  in  -ling,  used  by  our 
ancestors,  is  much  to  be  regretted ;  our  vagabond  is  but  a 
poor  substitute  for  the  ancient  scatterling,  and  lunatic  is 
much  less  suggestive  than  moonling. 

Besides  these  diminutives  of  the  German  part  of  our 
language  we  have  a  few  that  belong  to  the  French  addition. 
Among  these  the  most  fertile  is  -et,  the  older  form  of  the 
more  frequent  -ette,  which  occurs  quite  early,  as  in  — 
"  Et  se  li  prend  de  rire  envie 

Si  sagement  et  si  belvie, 

Qu'  elle  descrive  deux  fossettes 

D'ambedeux  parts  de  ses  yoe«es." 

Roman  de  la  Hose. 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  161 

Being  French,  and  apparently  not  very  easily  joined  to  true 
Saxon  words,  this  syllable  has  either  come  into  use  only 
lately,  or  in  other  cases  lost  its  first  meaning.  Instead  of 
the  modern  pocket,  we  find  that  Henry  VIII.  put  a  certain 
"book  into  his  poke,''  and  even  as  late  as  Shakespeare, 
melancholy  Jaques,  in  the  "  Forest  of  Arden," 

"  Drew  a  dial  from  his^o^e 
And  looking  on  it  with  lacklustre  eye. 
Says  very  wisely:  It  is  ten  o'clock." 

Now,  the  diminutive  meaning  is  entirely  lost,  for  we  speak 
of  vast  and  capacious  pockets ;  so  it  is  in  packet,  pullet, 
trumpet,  and  lancet  from  the  French  words  poule,  trompe, 
and  lance.  In  russet  from  roux,  and  in  owlet,  its  diminutive 
power  is  still  felt ;  in  martinet  and  islet  at  least  in  a  moder- 
ate degree.  Varlet  is  the  French  valet,  which  again  is  the 
substitute  for  the  older  vaslet,  the  diminutive  of  vassallus. 
In  the  single  word  linnet  it  has  not  only  been  added  to  an 
old  Saxon  word,  but  actually  superseded  the  original  Saxon 
diminutive,  for  before  the  invasion  the  word  was  linece. 

Our  diminutive  -el  is  mainly  derived  from  the  o.ld  French 
ending  -el,  which  was  subsequently  very  generally  softened 
into  -eau.  Our  English  words  having  been  imported  from 
the  French  at  the  time  that  -el  was  still  in  use,  they  have 
preserved  the  old  form  with  us,  whilst  they  have  changed 
on  the  Continent.     Thus  we  say  — 

mackerel,  the  old  French  maqueral,  for  the  modem  maquereau; 
pommel,  "  pommel,  "  pommeau; 

castle,  "  chatel,  "  chS,teau; 

prunel,  "  prunel,  "  pruneau. 

As  a  true  diminutive  it  is  rare  in  English.  We  have  from 
cock,  cocker,  and  then  cockerel.     Thus  in  Shakespeare :  — 

Ariel.    Which  of  he  or  Adrian,  for  a  good  wager,  first  begins  to  crow? 

Seb.      The  old  cock. 

Ant      The  cockrel.  Tempest,  II.  1. 

From  pike  we  make  pickerel,  and  from  sour,  sorrel.     Satchel 
stands  alone.     Bottle  and  corbeil  in  fortifications  come  to  us 
11 


162  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

from  the  original  German  forms  Jmtte  and  k&rh,  through  the 
pseudo-Latin  diminutives  hoticula  and  corhiculus  and  the 
French  houteille  and  corheille.  Here  also  care  must  be  had 
not  to  confound  with  these  true  diminutives  words  termi- 
nating now  in  -el  and  now  in  -le,  which  are  derived  from 
Latin  pkirals,  such  as  :  — 

battle,  from  the  French  bataille,  and  the  Latin  batualia ; 
entrail,  "  entraille,  "  entralia; 

marvel,  "  merveille,  "  mirabilia. 

Occasionally  an  additional  r  is  inserted  before  this  -el^  as  in 
mongrel  from  the  Saxon  meng,  which  we  have  in  mingle 
and  in  among  ;  in  wastrel  from  waste,  a  common,  and  pro- 
vincially  at  least,  and  in  Scotland,  hangrel,  a  small  hook, 
and  gangrel,  a  vagabond.  Unlike  the  before  mentioned  -et, 
this  syllable  combines  quite  readily  with  certain  old  Saxon 
words,  as  shovel,  bundle  from  bound,  needle,  and  muzzle  from 
mouth.  In  fiail,  fowl,  and  nail  we  see  a  mere  contraction 
from  the  original  Jlaegel,  faegel  and  naegl,  still  preserved 
in  the  German  words  Flegel,  Vogel  and  Nagel.  The 
termination  -ht,  which  is  occasionally  used  for  similar  pur- 
poses, seems  to  be  nothing  else  but  a  combination  of  -el 
and  -et,  such  as  appears  in  the  French  words  oiselet  and  oeillet, 
and  the  Italian  manteletto,  although  there  is  some  possibility 
that  it  might  have  originated  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  lyt,  our 
little.  The  old  French  hamel  (now  hameau)  became  thus 
hamlet;  other  examples  are  crosslet,  and  sparklet  and  streamlet, 
in  which  the  foreign  termination  is  added  to  Saxon  words. 

Diminutive  endings  of  classic  origin  are  found  in  fernde 
and  chapel,  and  compound  in  ret-ic-ule,  a  very  small  net, 
particle,  article,  and  curricle,  while  vermicelli  and  viohnceUo 
have  come  to  us  through  the  Italian. 

Other  diminutive  endings  of  this  kind  are  still  so  far 
foreign  to  our  ear  and  mind  that  we  generally  use  them 
without  a  clear  perception  of  their  original  meaning.  When 
we  speak  of  a  libel,  we  rarely  think  of  a  small  book,  nor  do 
words  like  vehicle  and  obstacle  convey  to  us  the  idea  of  dim- 


HOW   NOUNS   ARE  MADE.  J  63 

inution.  Globule  and  animalcule^  being  scientific  terms,  are 
more  likely  to  be  correctly  appreciated ;  circle  suggests  but 
a  certain  figure.  Still  less  are  Greek  forms  of  this  kind 
likely  to  be  understood,  and  few  ever  think  of  a  little  king 
or  a  small  star,  when  they  use  the  words  basilisk  and  aster- 
isk  ;  nor  is  obelisk  apt  to  be  more  suggestive. 

A  third  class  of  such  terminations  are  employed  to  form 
augmentatives,  and  these  also  are  generally  of  foreign  origin. 
Thus  from  the  French  we  take  mountain  from  mount,  and 
fountain  from  fount,  standard  and  bombard;  from  the  Italian 
trombone  from  trump,  balloon  from  ball ;  and  from  the  Span- 
ish barracoon.  But  there  is  no  lack  of  old  Saxon  syllables, 
also,  which  were  once  used  for  this  purpose,  and  can  easily 
be  traced  back  to  the  word  from  which  they  descend. 
Thus  we  find  that  wold,  the  German  wald,  enters  into  com- 
mon nouns  and  proper  names  alike,  soon  losing,  of  course, 
its  delicate  initial.  Threshold  meant  at  first  the  thresh  wold 
or  wooden  floor  for  threshing,  which  was  almost  always  just 
before  the  house  door,  where  it  may  still  be  found  in  many 
countries.  Arnold  and  Reynold  are  made  in  like  manner. 
Then  we  have  wolf,  which,  however,  already  of  old  seems 
to  have  lost  both  its  first  letter  and  its  original  meaning. 
It  now  survives  only  in  the  mis-spelt  names  of  Bardolph, 
Marcolph,  Randolph,  and  Adolphus  with  their  inorganic  ph. 
The  more  frequent  termination  -ard  owes  its  origin  probably 
to  more  than  one  ancestor,  as  its  many  different  meanings 
can  only  be  explained  by  ascribing  them  to  as  many  differ- 
ent sources.  In  some  words  it  is  no  doubt  the  same  as  hard, 
and  was  derived  from  the  German  through  the  French. 
This  meaning  we  find  in  Bernard,  Reynard,  and  Leonard, 
from  the  bear,  the  fox,  and  the  lion  ;  in  wizard,  whom  Dr. 
Angus  facetiously  describes  as  too  wise  by  half,  from  wise, 
in  staggard,  a  stag  of  four  years  old,  in  buzzard,  and  in  hag- 
gard, which  probably  meant  looking  hard  as  a  hag.  Pollard 
is  not  yet  explained,  though  it  may  come  from  Paul,  and 
dastard  is  not  made  of  hard,  but  is  only  the  Anglo-Saxon 


164  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

participle  of  the  verb  dastrian,  once  spelt  dastrod,  although 
it  has  -also  been  explained  as  a  contraction  of  dared  and 
hard.  In  other  words  it  may  be  traced  back  to  our  Saxon 
word  ward.  This  explanation  would  give  a  sad  blow  to 
some  of  our  finest  names,  as  Hayward  would  become  but 
the  ward  or  guardian  of  hay,  Stoddard  of  the  stud,  Dur- 
ward,  of  the  door,  Kenna7*d  of  the  kennel,  and  Steward  of 
the  (house)  stead  or  the  stow.  Goddard,  the  goat-ward,  is 
still  at  the  North  pronounced  Gotherd,  and  there  means  a 
fool,  which  adds  some  probability  to  the  surmise  that  coward 
might,  in  like  manner,  be  simply  the  cow-ward.  Poor  Ho- 
garth would  become  a  hog-ward,  and  sink  still  lower,  as 
Swift  says  of  him  in  his  clever  satire  of  the  Legion-Club  :  — 

*'  How  I  want  thee,  hura'rous  Hogart, 
Thou,  I  hear,  a  pleasant  rogue  art." 

Of  Bastard  nothing  more  is  definitely  known  than  the  as- 
sociation with  base  birth,  as  in  "  King  Lear,"  I.  2  — 
"  Why  bastard  ?  Wherefore  base  ?  " 
In  Old  English  the  termination  was  frequently  used  in  a 
depreciatory  and  contemptuous  sense ;  thus  we  find  hlinkard 
in  the  Homilies,  dizzard  in  Burton's  "Anatomy,"  dvJlard 
in  Shakespeare's  "  King  Lear,"  puggard  and  stinkard.  The 
majority  of  these  words  are  no  longer  in  use ;  we  still 
have,  however,  hraggard  and  luggard,  drunkard  and  dotard, 
duUarrd  and  niggard,  which  Shakespeare  in  "  Julius  Caesar  " 
even  uses  as  a  verb,  saying  of  the  night,  — 

"Which  we  will  m^r^aj-c?  with  a  little  rest." 

To  derive  Gifford  from  "  give  hard  "  is  probably  too  violent 
a  presumption,  but  in  changing  sweethard,  as  it  originally 
was,  into  sweetheart,  no  great  harm  seems  to  have  been 
done  to  the  meaning. 

French  augmentatives  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  in  use  in 
modern  English.  The  only  genuine  syllable  of  the  kind  is 
perhaps  our  -ee,  which  comes  down  to  us  indirectly  from 
the  Latin  -atm.   The  latter  survives,  oddly  enough,  in  some 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  165 

of  our  words  as  -ate,  even  where  the  same  words  have  been 
essentially  modified  in  French.  We  still  have  state,  curate, 
and  advocate,  from  the  corresponding  Latin  words,  where 
our  neighbors  have  now  etat,  cure,  and  avocat.  True 
French  terms  of  this  kind  are  feoffee,  referee,  legatee,  jubilee, 
and  debauchee,  retaining,  as  may  be  seen,  the  French  accent 
on  the  last  syllable,  with  the  exception  only  of  committee 
and  apogee.  Levee  may  come  from  the  Latin  levata,  though 
it  is  more  commonly  derived  from  the  French  verb  lever  ; 
grandee  oWes  its  last  syllable  simply  to  an  effort  to  imitate 
the  Spanish  pronunciation  of  grande.  The  -ee  is  not  un- 
frequently  exchanged  for  a  simple  y,  which  represents, 
however,  the  same  Latin  -atus,  as  in  country  from  contrata, 
duchy  from  ducatus,  journey  from  diurnata,  clergy  from 
clericatus,  beauty  from  bellitatem,  city  from  civitatem,  and 
bounty  from  bonitatem.  The  same  y,  it  must  not  be  over- 
looked, stands  quite  as  oflen  for  the  Romance  termination 
-ie,  as  in  cavalry  and  infantry,  fancy  and  courtesy.  A  curi- 
ous feature  of  this  class  of  words  is,  that  they  often  assume 
an  r  before  the  y,  for  no  other  ostensible  reason  than  from 
the  force  of  analogy  with  some  word  like  artillery,  aided 
by  a  few  Saxon  words  with  a  natural  r  as  buttery.  Such  are, 
e.  g.,  of  Saxon  words :  fishery,  shrubbery,  rookery  and  mid- 
wifery, and  of  Norman-French  words:  peasantry,  bravery 
and  debauchery. 

Besides  these  three  important  classes  of  nouns,  which 
convey,  in  addition  to  the  meaning  of  the  radical  part,  the 
ideas  of  descent,  diminution  and  augmentation,  followed 
by  nicer  shades  of  signification,  we  find  in  English  certain 
derivative  nouns,  in  which  the  addition  does  not  produce  so 
clear  a  change  of  meaning.  This  is  especially  the  case 
when  the  suffixes,  though  once  full  and  significant  nouns, 
are  no  longer  used  as  such,  and  now  appear  only  as  parts 
of  other  words.  The  Anglo-Saxon  had  thus  from  the  verb 
deman  to  deem,  a  noun  dom,  which  survives  in  the  mod- 
ern doom.     We  speak  still  of  "  dooms-day  "  as  the  day  of 


166  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

final  judgment,  and  of  a  "  Domes-day  Book,"  not  only  of 
William  the  Conqueror,  but  such  as  King  Alfred  already 
made,  when  he  divided  his  kingdom  into  hundreds  and 
tithings.  The  Dooms  of  Ethelbert  are  dear  to  us  as  first 
recognizing  Christianity  and  establishing  the<  Church  in 
Kent.  The  doo7n  of  a  traitor  is  still  expressive  enough ; 
but  nouns  made  up  by  the  aid  of  this  word  do  not  profit 
any  longer  by  its  special  meaning.  Freedom  and  thraldom 
are  old  Saxon  words ;  hirthdom  is  now  rare ;  kingdom  and 
earldom  are  as  recent  as  Christendom  and  the  less  fre- 
quent Heathendom.  It  will  be  seen  that  in  most  cases  dom 
is  added  to  the  names  of  persons  or  their  peculiar  qualities, 
and  thus  serves,  very  generally,  to  designate  the  corre- 
sponding state,  office,  or  dignity.  In  wisdom  and  freedom  it 
has  been  added  to  adjectives  ;  dukedom  and  martyrdom  are 
the  offspring  of  a  Saxon  and  a  Norman  word  united. 

The  curious  suffix  -ric,  derived  from  the  Saxon  rican, 
to  rule,  bears  on  its  face  clear  marks  of  its  ancient  connec- 
tion with  the  Greek  and  Latin  root  reg,  which  we  preserve 
in  words  like  '.-egal  or  direct.  It  conveys  the  idea  of  rule 
and  of  its  extent,  the  former  e.  g.  in  Aelfric,  he  who  rules 
with  elf-like  wisdom,  the  latter  in  Surrey,  formerly  Southric, 
the  kingdom  south  of  the  river  Thames.  The  two  words 
hood  and  head,  which  we  meet  with  so  frequently  in  Eng- 
lish, are  alike  from  the  old  verb  haehban,  our  to  have, 
and  express  vaguely  the  state  or  condition  of  things.  Its 
corresponding  form  in  German  is  heit,  and  in  Bavaria  and 
other  parts  of  Germany,  the  common  people  speak  even 
in  our  day  of  the  good  or  bad  "  Heit,"  or  state  of  affiiirs. 
In  an  ancient  metrical  version  of  the  Athanasian  Creed, 
copied  in  Hickes'  "  Thesaurus,"  (I.  233,)  we  find  "  Ne  the 
hodes  auht  mengande,"  i.  e.,  neither  aught  confounding  the 
persons.  Priesthood,  monkhood,  knighthood,  and  childhood 
occur  very  early  in  our  language  ;  womanhood,  neighborhood, 
and  widowhood  from  nouns,  and  likelihood,  falsehood,  and 
hardihood  are  comparatively  modern.     Here  also  hybrids 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  167 

occur  frequently,  as  in  falsehood  and  squirehood.  Head 
seems  to  have  been  employed  when  the  full  meaning  of 
the  original  noun  was  to  be  conveyed,  for  which  reason  we 
probably  say  Godhead  and  manhood.  Maidenhead  does  not 
belong  to  this  class,  as  it  refers  literally  to  a  head  of  the 
Virgin  Mary,  an  image  which  stood  in  that  locality,  as 
Bagford  writes  to  Hearne.  Our  modern  -ship  comes  from 
the  Saxon  verb  scaepan^  to  shape,  and  expresses  but  rarely 
any  thing  more  than  the  general  idea  of  form  and  fashion. 
It  is,  however,  interesting  to  notice  how,  in  the  only  two 
instances  in  which  the  original  spelling  of  the  word  is  pre- 
served, the  precise  meaning  also  survives.  They  are  land- 
scape, occasionally  written  landship,  and  foolscap,  which  does 
not  mean,  as  is  generally  believed  and  even  conveyed  in 
the  water-mark,  a  fool's  cap,  but  the  shape  of  folio,  a  large 
leaf.  The  term  is  as  old  as  Queen  Anne,  whose  statute  laid 
a  tax  on  "  Genoa  foolscap  fine  and  second,"  in  order  to 
protect  the  home-manufacture  of  paper  against  the  com- 
petition of  Italian  importations.  From  the  same  root  in  fol- 
ium (the  Greek  </)vAAov)  we  derive  our  "  foliage,"  the  leaves 
of  a  tree,  and  at  least  the  idea,  when  we  speak  of  turning 
over  the  leaves  of  a  book.  Of  modern  forms  worship 
deserves  an  explanation.  It  consists  of  worth  and  shape, 
meaning  "  to  hold  worthy,"  in  esteem  and  in  honor,  and  is 
thus  used  in  the  much-abused  words  of  our  beautiful 
marriage-service,  "  and  with  my  body  thee  worship."  As  this 
part  of  our  church  service  has  been  handed  down,  almost 
unaltered,  from  the  days  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  forefathers, 
this  word,  like  a  few  others,  has  here  retained  its  original, 
simple  meaning,  and  has  of  course  nothing  to  do  with  the 
now  current  signification  of  worshiping  God  or  idols. 

Shire  comes  in  like  manner  from  a  Saxon  verb  scearan, 
which  has  given  us  a  perfect  host  of  descendants,  all  of 
which  retain  just  enough  resemblance  to  their  ancestor  to 
be  able  to  prove  their  legitimacy,  and  yet  have  branched 
off  into  widely  different  meanings.     The  fundamental  idea 


168  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

is,  of  course,  to  cut  off ;  hence  the  severed  part  is  a  share 
in  business,  or  a  shore,  when  separated  by  sea  ;  the  instru- 
ments for  doing  the  act  are  shears  and  nautically  sheers. 
What  has  been  cut  off  is  called  a  {^oi)sherd,  or  with  a 
transposed  r  a  shred  ;  the  mutilated  remains  are  short  or 
shorn  ;  when  healed  there  remains  a  scar,  as  the  cut-off 
piece  of  stuff  may  be  either  a  shirt  or  a  skirt.  Ignorance 
is  sheer,  when  it  is  cut  off  from  all  knowledge,  and  even 
sharp  may  belong  to  the  family,  if  we  accept  the  analogy 
of  words  formed  like  help  and  damp.  The  use  of  -shire  is 
now  almost  exclusively  limited  to  its  meaning  of  cut-off 
portions  of  land  and  their  local  designation.  In  sheriff  it 
has  been  sadly  mutilated;  the  word  contains  shire  and 
reeve,  its  superior  officer. 

The  syllable  -ness,  for  which  no  legitimate  pedigree  has 
yet  been  found,  is  therefore  suspected  of  being  an  impostor, 
consisting  at  first  simply  of  double  s,  as  in  Greek  and  Latin 
words  we  find  them  added  to  certain  roots,  e.  g.,  in  OdXaa-cra 
and  fxiXLaaa,  or  mantissa  and  vibrissa.  At  a  very  early  pe- 
riod of  our  history,  however,  an  inorganic  n  seems  to  have 
crept  in  before  the  final  letters,  and  thus  it  appears  now 
in  all  Germanic  languages.  We  have  business,  greatness, 
kindness,  and  likeness,  righteousness,  and  lonesomeness  ;  and  in 
dialects  even  drouthiesundieness,  fondness  for  drink.  None 
of  these  words  can  be  used  as  verbs  except  one,  and  that 
is  witness.  The  number  of  nouns  formed  in  the  same 
manner  in  foreign  languages,  and  thence  imported  into 
English,  is  of  course  very  great,  but  of  comparatively  less 
importance  for  modern  English,  as  they  did  not  grow  on 
English  soil,  but  were  brought  in  ready  made.  Such  are 
words  like  domin^(m,  homage,  sanctimo?iy,  somnolewcy,  verd- 
ure, mot^o^^,  and  justice,  from  the  Latin,  and  eulogi/,  pan- 
orama, heroism,  triac?,  and  analysis  from  the  Greek. 

Nouns  have  thus  been  shown  to  be  either  simple  or 
derivative  ;  it  remains  but  to  say  a  few  words  witli  regard 
to  compound  nouns.     Properly  speaking,  no    real  com- 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  169 

position  has  taken  place  unless  actually  two  distinct  words 
have  been  joined  in  such  a  manner  as  to  produce  by  their 
joint  meaning  a  third  and  new  signification.  In  the 
modern  form  of  languages,  however,  great  license  is 
allowed  in  this  respect,  and  we  find  now  all  nouns  called 
compound  which  contain  two  distinct  roots.  Our  Anglo- 
Saxon  fathers  were  particularly  fond  of  this  class  of 
nouns,  as  the  nation  was  then  still  in  the  state  of  a  child 
which  cannot  and  will  not  form  abstract  ideas,  and  conse- 
quently does  not  use  abstract  nouns.  As  any  such  idea 
became  clearer  to  all  and  entered  into  daily  conversation, 
it  became,  of  course,  necessary  to  find  an  adequate  ex- 
pression for  it,  and  this  was  at  first  done  by  compound 
nouns.  The  Saxons  were  as  poor  mariners  as  the  majority 
of  Germans  are  to  this  day,  thanks  to  their  remoteness 
from  the  sea,  and  hence  a  ship  was  to  them  a  mere-hus,  or 
sea-house.  Gast-gedale,  the  parting  of  the  ghost  with  the 
body,  was  their  nearest  approach  to  our  abstract  "  death ; " 
(Bsc-plegan,  the  playing  of  ash  (spears),  suggested  to  their 
mind,  familiar  with  the  sight,  the  idea  of  "  battle  ; "  and  the 
Saviour  was  to  them  touchingly,  as  he  is  to  the  Germans  to 
this  day,  the  Healand,  the  "  Healing  "  one.  Unfortunately,  but 
few  of  these  beautiful  and  suggestive  words  survive ;  and 
the  loss  is  great,  for  they  spoke  clearly  and  appealingly  to 
the  minds  of  the  mass,  and  almost  always  suggested  a 
poetical  idea  to  the  educated.  The  language,  even,  seems 
to  have  parted  with  them  most  reluctantly,  for  we  find  that 
Old  English  long  adhered  to  them,  even  when  they  were 
already  sorely  beset  by  our  modern  Latin  terms.  In  those 
days  writers  would  often  use  both  the  ancient  and  the  new- 
fashioned  term,  as  it  suited  the  occasion.  Thus  Wickliffe  has 
agenrysynge  (again  rising)  and  resurrection,  out-taken  and 
except.  Gascoigne  uses  now  star-conner  and  then  astrol- 
oger ;  Gelding  hesitates  between  half-god  and  demigod. 

The  few  that  survive  are  not  always  as  well  preserved  as 
witchcraft,  handicraft,  and  hookcraft  are,  to  which  in  Holland's 


170  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

"  Plutarch,"  leechcraft  is  still  regularly  added.  Many  are 
so  completely  disguised  that  they  have  to  be  carefully 
studied  and  built  up  again,  like  the  scattered  skeleton  of 
some  ancient  fossil.  In  gospel  we  may  thankfully  recog- 
nize the  "  good  spell "  or  good  message  of  our  pious  fathers, 
the  evayyeXeia  of  the  Greek.  Acorn  barely  suggests  the 
oak-corn  or  fruit,  for  com  was  in  those  days  used  for  all 
kinds  of  fruit,  and  not,  as  now,  only  for  the  particular  staple 
of  each  country,  by  which  abuse  corn  now  means  maize  in 
America,  wheat  in  England,  rye  in  Germany,  and  barley 
in  Sweden.  Acton  in  Middlesex  is,  in  like  manner,  the 
oak-town.  Two  compounds  of  the  Saxon  word  eage,  our 
eye,  are  interesting.  Our  ancestors  spoke  of  a  wind-eage, 
or  wind's  eye,  which  we  call  obscurely  "  window,"  and  most 
poetically  named  our  unmeaning  "  daisy,"  as  Chaucer  ex- 
plains in  his  charming  verse:  — 

"  That  well  by  reason  men  call6  it  maie 
The  daisie  or  else  the  eie  of  the  daie." 

Emerson  says  very  truly  of  these  and  similar  words :  "  Is 
it  not  true  that  language  is  fossil  poetry,  made  up  of  images 
and  tropes,  which  now  in  their  secondary  use  have  long 
ceased  to  remind  us  of  their  poetic  origin  ?  "  One  of  the 
worst-treated  words  of  this  kind  is  dealy  which  has  con- 
tinually dwindled  down  into  simple  die,  so  as  to  be  mixed 
up  with  the  diminutive  -el  Where  our  fathers  spoke  re- 
spectfully of  a  lyt-deal,  a  mid-deal^  and  a  hound-deal,  we  say 
curtly  little,  middle,  and  bundle,  as  was  done  already  in 
1559,  when  a  political  pamphlet  had  it  thus :  "  Papistrie  being 
an  heresie  or  rather  a  Bondle  made  up  of  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  heresies."  The  same  fate  has  befallen  dale ;  Kent- 
dale,  the  place  where  the  river  Kent  passes  through  a  fair 
dale,  is  now  Kendal,  and  Sleddel  was  originally  Slate-dale. 
The  oft-misquoted  bridal  has  an  entirely  diiferent  origin : 
it  is  a  mere  reminiscence  of  the  nuptial  feast  associated 
with  the  specially  strong  bride-ale. 

Originally  the  language  possessed  a  guard  against  such 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  MADE.  171 

corruption  in  the  rule  that  compound  words  invariably 
threw  the  accent  on  the  first  part  of  the  compound.  Thus 
a  hldckbird  is  easily  distinguished  from  a  black  bird,  and 
Newport  from  a  new  port ;  but  the  rule  suffered,  at  an 
early  period,  certain  exceptions  in  the  case  of  words  in 
which  such  an  accent  would  have  made  distinct  pronuncia- 
tion impossible,  as  in  monks-hood  and  well-head.  Hence 
the  distinction  became  less  marked  and  the  integrity  of 
compound  nouns  was  destroyed  by  the  effect  of  this  ap- 
parently insignificant  agent. 

Large  numbers  of  genuine  compound  nouns,  again,  have 
lost  their  compound  meaning,  and  now  represent,  at  least 
to  the  unlearned,  but  one  single  idea.  These  are  mostly 
of  foreign  origin,  which  accounts  for  their  dimmed  signifi- 
cation. To  this  class  belong  vinegar,  from  the  French 
vin  aigre,  sour  wine  ;  verdict,  from  the  Latin  vere  dictum ; 
bachelor ,  from  the  French  bas  chevalier,  a  lower  knight,  —  al- 
though many  maintain  the  connection  with  the  barbarously 
formed  baccalaureus  j  biscuit,  from  the  Latin  bis  coctus, 
twice  baked,  the  Italian  biscotta;  and  mildew,  from  the 
spurious  German  Mehlthau. 

The  abuse  of  compound  nouns  is  fortunately  checked 
in  English  by  the  terse  and  concise  nature  of  the  language. 
The  incontinence  of  other  idioms  in  this  respect  is,  how- 
ever, well  known.  The  Sanscrit  is  reported  to  own  at  least 
one  word  of  a  hundred  and  fifty-two  syllables.  Aristoph- 
anes made  one,  for  a  special  purpose,  of  seventy-seven. 
The  Germans  are  proverbially  fond  of  formidable  words, 
which  suit,  admirably,  sentences  of  forty  and  fifly  lines. 
Occasionally  even  our  English  indulges  in  a  monstrous 
combination,  as  when  Miss  Burney  speaks  of  "  the-sudden- 
at-the-moment>though-from-lingering-illness-often-previous- 
ly-expected- death  of  Mr.  Burney's  wife." 


CHAPTER  X. 

HOW   NOUNS    ARE    USED. 
"  How  many  numbers  is  in  Nouns  ?    Two !  "  —  Merry  Wives^  Act  IV.  Sc.  1. 

Our  Saxon  forefathers  had  as  artistic  a  fabric  of  cases 
for  their  nouns  as  Greek  grammarian  ever  recorded.  It 
is  true  they  did  not  quite  rival  the  accuracy  and  exuberance 
with  which  the  Algonquin  languages  of  the  North  Amer- 
ican continent  form  almost  as  many  cases  as  there  can  be 
relations  of  nouns  in  a  sentence.  Still,  grammarians  differ 
even  now  as  to  their  number,  and  rarely  admit  less  than  six. 
It  seems  unfortunate  enough  that  we  should  in  our  day, 
and  in  a  living,  actively  thriving  idiom,  yet  resort  to  the 
quaint  artifices  and  the  almost  childish  language  of  the 
ancients  who  knew  no  grammar.  It  was  all  very  well 
for  Peripatetics  and  Stoics  to  imagine  an  upright  or  direct 
line  which  was  to  represent  the  name  of  the  object,  the 
nominative,,  whilst  a  number  of  declining  lines,  {deden- 
sion,)  approaching  a  horizontal  line,  were  to  represent  the 
different  relations  of  one  noun  to  another.  These  falls, 
or  direct  and  oblique  cases,  suggest  nothing  to  our  mind, 
and  yet  we  are  set  to  work,  at  an  age  when  we  are  least 
likely  to  appreciate  the  illustration,  to  learn  all  the  tech- 
nical terms  of  early  Latin  grammarians,  and  to  burden  our 
memory  with  numerous  useless  names.  Surely,  it  is  high 
time  that  a  grammar  should  be  written,  English  not  only 
in  name  but  in  spirit. 

The  more  refined  than  useful  system  of  Anglo-Saxon 
declensions  shared  the  fate  of  all  similar  contrivances.  It 
was  tacitly  and  almost  universally  abandoned,  as  soon  as 


HOW  NOUNS   ARE   USEDii|jyQ|tP» 

another  language  came  in  contact  with  our  own.  As  the 
Latin  inflections  were  disregarded  by  the  barbarous  con- 
querors of  Rome,  so  our  Saxon  declensions  were  summarily 
thrown  overboard  by  our  Norman  masters.  Their  ear, 
familiar  only  with  their  own  Norman  sounds,  w^as  not  easily 
enabled  to  catch  the  nice  distinction  of  vowels  and  final 
consonants  which  constituted  the  many  inflections  of  Saxon 
nouns.  They  were  the  masters,  moreover,  and  with  rude 
insolence  used  only  so  much  of  their  subjects'  speech  as 
was  absolutely  necessary  to  make  them  fulfill  their  com- 
mands. It  was  the  vassal's  duty  to  guess  and  supply  what 
might  be  wanting ;  they  cared  not  to  take  the  trouble  of 
learning  the  numerous  varieties  of  form,  which  to  them  had 
neither  life  nor  interest.  Thus  the  language  returned  to  an 
almost  primitive  simplicity,  and  for  the  delicate,  hardly 
perceptible  modifications  of  sound  at  the  end  of  nouns 
which  characterized  the  highly  developed  Saxon,  were  sub- 
stituted clear,  unmistakable  words,  which  were  placed 
before  them,  prepositions  and  pronouns. 

This  violence  done  the  language  of  our  fathers  was  all 
the  more  effective  as  it  came  at  a  time  when,  as  the  his- 
tory of  all  idioms  teaches  us,  certain  terminations  are 
losing  their  precise  characteristic  sound,  and  with  it  their 
first  clear  meaning.  They  become  then  apparently,  if  not 
really,  useless  and  inconvenient  to  the  mass  of  the  people. 
"What  was  before  the  case  with  the  foreigner,  is  now 
equally  so  with  the  native  :  they  convey  no  longer  any  pre- 
cise idea  to  his  mind,  and  awaken  no  interest  in  his  heart. 
He  first  neglects,  and,  after  a  while,  abandons  them  alto- 
gether. "Besides,"  says  an  unknown  author  quoted  by 
Dean  Trench,  "  in  all  languages  there  is  a  constant  tend- 
ency to  relieve  themselves  of  that  precision  which  chooses 
a  fresh  symbol  for  every  shade  of  meaning,  to  lessen  the 
amount  of  nice  distinctions,  and  to  detect,  as  it  were,  a 
royal  road  to  the  interchange  of  opinion."  As  the  child 
learns  to  walk  without  leading-strings  or  other  assistance, 


174  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

SO  mea  begin  to  find  that  they  can  commune  with  each 
other  without  supplying  all  the  little  helps  to  understand- 
ing which  were  first  required.  A  hint  now  supplies  an 
idea,  and  more  is  conveyed  by  suggestion  than  by  fully  ex- 
pressed words.  The  people  gradually  find  out  that  they 
can  do  as  well  without  a  large  number  of  grammatical 
forms,  and  therefore  cease  to  employ  them.  This  process 
is  aided  and  accelerated  by  the  general  tendency  to  greater 
uniformity.  It  is  true  that  this  leads  often  to  a  loss  of 
what  had  real,  intrinsic  value,  and  the  greater  simplicity, 
the  higher  mechanical  perfection  of  an  idiom,  is  but  a 
sorry  compensation  for  the  means  of  setting  forth  in  a 
more  lively,  if  not  a  clearer  manner,  the  inner  feeling  of 
the  speaker.  Still,  such  is  the  fate  of  languages,  in  which, 
as  in  all  mechanical  contrivances,  every  thing  tends  toward 
the  one  great  end,  —  to  obtain  the  greatest  result  by  the 
smallest  means. 

Our  English,  has,  therefore,  preserved  but  very  few 
traces  of  the  large  number  of  inflections  which  trouble  us 
so  much  in  reading  the  sadly  incorrect  remnants  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  literature.  The  dative  plural,  for  instance,  which 
always  terminated  in  m,  survives  only  in  him  (originally 
heom),  them,  whom,  seldom,  and  whilom,  which  latter  word, 
however,  is  now  but  rarely  used,  except  for  some  special 
purpose.  Spenser  says  yet  in  all  sincerity  and  good  earn- 
est,— 

"  Where  now  the  studious  lawyers  have  their  bowers 
There  whilom  wont  the  Templar  knights  abide." 

But  when  we  meet  with  it  in  a  connection  like  the  fol- 
lowing :  — 

"  In  Northern  clime  a  valorous  knight 
Did  whilom  kill  his  bear  in  fight 
And  wound  a  fiddler,^'  —  Hudibrat. 

we  feel  that  the  waggish  poet  has  adopted  it  merely  for  its 
antiquated  sound,  and  to  render  the  verse  more  ludicrous. 
Afler  it  has  thus  continued  to  exist  for  a  time,  like  some 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  175 

fossil  among  the  alluvium  of  the  language,  with  all  its  orig- 
inal characters  unobliterated,  it  seems  now  to  have  been 
entirely  worn  out  with  old  age. 

With  these  exceptions,  nothing  has  come  down  to  us  of 
Anglo-Saxon  declensions  but  a  single  termination,  the  s, 
by  means  of  which  we  now  form  all  our  genitives.  It  is, 
moreover,  the  only  sign  of  a  case  which  we  now  possess. 
Even  the  old  form  of  es  in  nouns  which  end  in  s,  z,  or  x, 
seems  to  become  burdensome,  and,  except  in  a  few  cases  like 
"  the  foxes  tail,"  we  supply  its  place  now  by  a  simple  apostro- 
phe, as  in  "Eblis'  self"  and  "Tigris'  shore."  Shakespeare 
seems  yet  to  have  hesitated  about  it,  for  he  says  now  "  his 
mistress'  eyebrow,"  and  now  "  St.  Jacques's  pilgrim."  The 
apostrophe  we  insert  nowadays  before  this  letter  s  as  an  ap- 
parent note  of  elision,  has  no  such  meaning,  but  is  simply  a 
modern  expedient,  a  late  refinement,  to  distinguish  the  gen- 
itive from  the  plural.  What  we  have  thus  gained  in  uniform- 
ity we  have  lost  in  expressiveness  ;  we  are  now  without  the 
means  to  convey  by  the  outward  form  of  nouns  any  sug- 
gestion as  to  gender.  It  was  not  so  of  old,  when  every 
noun  had  a  different  declension  according  to  its  significa- 
tion ;  the  first  effect  of  this  tendency  to  abolish  all  such 
distinctions  being  noticeable  in  the  days  of  Chaucer,  who 
uses  himself  the  first  feminine  genitive  in  es,  in  "The 
Prioresses  Tale,"  13383,  and  "with  modres pitee,"  13253. 

A  similar  fate  has  befallen  the  variety  of  forms  by  which 
our  fathers  endeavored  to  express  the  plural  number.  It 
is  well  known  that  this  was  in  almost  all  languages  accom- 
plished by  the  addition  to  the  root  of  a  word  denoting 
multitude,  folk,  etc.  Thus  in  Bengalese  the  very  word  loc, 
which  means  people,  is  added  to  all  nouns  to  make  a  plural. 
The  Hebrew,  in  like  manner,  took  im,  a  multitude,  and 
joined  it  to  the  singular  in  order  to  make  it  plural ;  hence 
our  English  plural  of  Cherub  and  Seraph  in  "Cherubim 
and  Seraphim  continually  do  cry,"  where  we  use  uncon- 
sciously a  Hebrew  declension.     In  other  languages,  as  in 


176  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

the  Chinese  and  some  of  the  languages  of  the  north- 
western Indians,  the  same  end  is  attained  by  a  mere  repeti- 
tion of  the  word.  Thus  the  Chinese  say,  tree-tree  for  our 
"  trees,"  but  this  leaves  it  undecided  whether  several  trees 
in  their  individuality  are  meant  or  a  whole  forest.  The  same 
mental  process  is  familiar  to  most  southern  races,  espe- 
cially the  Italians,  who  endeavor '  to  increase  the  force 
of  a  word  by  repeating  it,  as  in  their  "  bel  bello  "  or  "  presto 
presto."  A  curious  distinction  exists  in  some  languages, 
as  in  the  Persian,  between  the  plural  of  animate  and  that 
of  inanimate  objects,  the  one  being  made  in  aw,  the  other 
in  ha. 

The  Anglo-Saxon,  like  all  German  dialects,  had  its 
strong  nouns,  that  made  their  plural  by  a  change  of  the 
radical  vowel,  and  their  weak  nouns,  that  required  the  aid  of 
an  additional  syllable  for  the  same  purpose.  Of  the  former 
class  but  few  remain  in  our  day,  such  as  the  plurals  mice^ 
lice,  feet,  geese,  men,  and  women  ;  for  here,  also,  the  Norman 
conquest  made  an  end  to  the  existing  variety  of  forms. 
The  illiterate  masters,  at  least,  did  not  catch  the  nice  dis- 
tinctions of  sound ;  and  whefre  their  ear  really  caught  them, 
they  were  unwilling  to  take  the  trouble  of  committing 
them  to  memory.  They  found  one  very  largely  used  ter- 
mination, the  masculine  form  of  -as  ;  this  appeared  simple, 
and  was  all  the  easier  to  them  as  it  was  so  much  like  their 
own  familiar  s ;  so  they  adopted  it  as  their  favorite  end- 
ing for  the  plural,  and  soon,  by  the  force  of  the  principle 
of  analogy,  it  extended  to  nearly  all  nouns.  The  process 
was  aided  by  the  many  new  words  that  were  introduced, 
with  which  the  Saxon  forms  did  not  blend  readily,  and 
thus  all  plurals  were  gradually  made  in  s.  The  change 
was,  of  course,  neither  violent  nor  immediate.  In  our  old- 
est documents,  e.  g.,  in  the  famous  proclamation  of  Henry 
III.  1258,  and  in  the  first  political  songs,  found  in  Wright's 
collection,  the  majority  of  nouns  do  not  yet  make  their 
plural  in  s,  but  retain  a  variety  of  different  forms  from  the 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  177 

Anglo-Saxon.  The  uniformity  of  our  days  begins  only  to 
show  itself  toward  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  and  the  first 
part  of  the  fourteenth  century.  In  "  Piers  Ploughman  "  it 
is  fully  established,  with  a  few  exceptions  only  in  addition  to 
those  that  exist  now.  This  majority  begins  thus  to  rule 
just  at  the  time  when  French  words  entered  in  large  num- 
bers into  English,  at  a  period  of  which  Harrison's  Chroni- 
cle says  that  then  "  the  English  tongue  grew  into  such 
contempt  at  Court,  that  most  men  thought  it  no  small  dis- 
honor to  speak  any  English  there  ;  which  bravery  took  his 
hold  at  the  last  likewise  in  the  country  with  every  plough- 
man, that  even  the  very  carters  begun  to  wax  weary  of 
their  mother  tongue  and  labored  to  speak  French,  which 
was  then  counted  no  small  token  of  gentility."  Even  in 
the  sixteenth  and  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
there  is  no  distinction  made  between  s  and  es;  Shelton  has 
lyppes,  huyldynges,  princes,  and  lordes,  hartes,  and  hartis ; 
and  in  Taylor's  Works  (1630)  we  frnd  peares,  plumhes,  and 
greene  heanes.  But  soon  after  these  writers  the  principle 
of  adding  a  simple  s  to  all  nouns,  except  after  sibilants, 
etc.,  was  fully  established,  and  since  that  time  the  once 
very  popular  additional  e  has  become  daily  rarer.  After 
sibilants  we  prefer,  of  course,  es  as  an  orthographical  rem- 
edy, to  avoid  the  meeting  of  so  many  hissing  sounds,  which 
already  abound  in  the  language  beyond  the  rules  of  eu- 
phony. Thus  we  say  churches,  ages,  foxes,  glasses,  and  horses. 
But  even  th  takes  a  simple  s,  one  of  the  most  difficult 
sounds  for  all  foreigners,  except  only  cloth,  which  makes 
clothes  for  dress  or  cloths  the  material.  Mandeville  says 
still,  without  such  distinction,  both  "  tentes  made  of  clothes,^' 
and  "  clothed  in  clothes  of  gold."  Nor  is  this  the  only  in- 
stance of  two  plural  forms  for  two  different  meanings  of 
the  same  word;  for  we  have  staffs  for  sticks,  but  staves  for 
the  official  wand  or  the  musical  measure  ;  peas  for  the  seed, 
and  pease  for  the  species.     Peasen,  which  John  Wallis  tells 

us  was  still  used  in  the  seventeenth  century,  is  now  quite 
12 


178  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

obsolete.  It  is  more  curious,  however,  to  observe  that 
here  the  language  has  made  a  singular,  which  originally 
did  not  exist.  The  word  was  first  peas,  from  the  French 
"  pois."  vSpenser  says  in  his  "  Shepherd's  Calendar  "  for 
the  month  of  October :  "  Nought  worth  a  peas  ;  "  and  Put- 
tenham  has,  — 

"  Set  shallow  brooks  to  surging  seas, 
An  Oriental  pearl  to  a  white  ^ea«." 

Our  singular  pea  is  formed  upon  a  misconception  of 
peas  being  a  plural,  like  the  blunder  of  the  good  mayor  of 
a  town,  who  was  so  deeply  impressed  with  his  own  dignity 
that  he  always  spoke  of  a  "  claw  of  Parliament,"  and  the 
poet  Holmes^s  humorous  expression  of  the  "  One-Hoss 
Shay"  Many  an  ignorant  countryman  still  uses  Chinee  as 
the  singular  of  Chinese;  and  Milton,  in  his  "Paradise 
Lost,"  (III.  437,)  sins  in  the  opposite  direction,  when  he 
says :  — 

"  But  in  his  ways  lights  on  the  barren  plains 
Of  Sericana,  where  Chineses  drive 
With  sails  and  winds  their  carry  wagons  light." 

We  say,  finally,  pennies  for  coin,  and  pence  for  their 
value,  instead  of  the  Old  English  pens,  so  liable  to  misap- 
prehension.    Mandeville  has,  (p.  93,)  — 

"  There  caste  Judas  the  30  pens  before  him." 

A  few  words  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin,  not  content  with 
the  addition  of  5,  change  besides  their  final/  into  v.  This 
observance  is  not  old,  however,  for  the  first  instance  known 
of  it  is  the  only  one  that  occurs  in  Mandeville,  where  he  says 
theves,  instead  of  his  ordinary  plural,  like  knyfes,  lyfes,  and 
wyfes.  We  say  now  lives,  loaves,  thieves,  and  wives,  but  we 
except  all  Norman-French  words  like  chiefs,  reliefs,  briefs, 
and  fiefs,  save  only  beef  where  the  Latin  "  boves  "  probably 
led  to  the  modern  form  of  beeves.  We  except  in  like  man- 
ner, for  reasons  not  yet  satisfactorily  explained,  words  ter- 
minating in  oof,  rf  and  jf,  and  therefore  do  not  change  the 
/in  roofs,  dwarfs,  and  muffs,  which,  in  contrast  to  the  modem 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  179 

wharves,  led  an  irate  author  to  ask,  "Why  do  we  say 
wharves?  Do  we  speak  of  the  chieves  of  clans  and  the 
rooves  of  houses  ?  as  if  the  ladies  carried  mufves  to  keep 
their  dear  little  hands  warm,  or  as  if  Tom  Thumb  was  to 
be  spoken  of  as  big  among  the  dwarves.^*  If  we  preserve 
the  /  also  in  fifes,  strifes,  and  safes,  it  is  for  the  good  reason 
that  without  such  a  mark  we  could  not  distinguish  the  first 
from  fives  (5),  and  the  others  from  the  similar  forms  of 
the  verbs,  he  strives  and  he  saves. 

Another  peculiarity  of  our  modern  plural  is  the  intro- 
duction of  an  additional  e  after  the  vowels  y  and  o,  to  pro- 
tect the  long  vowel.  This  necessity  seems  to  have  been 
early  felt,  for  Shakespeare  already  writes :  — 

"  In  russet  yeas  and  honest  kersey  noes.''''  —  Love's  Labor  's  Lost^  V.  2. 
and  — 

"  All  yon  fiery  oes  and  eyes  of  light."  —  Mids.  Night's  Dream,  III.  2. 

Hence  we  say  now,  fites,  destinies,  and  soliloquies;  but 
the  necessity  ceases  where  another  vowel  already  precedes 
the  above  mentioned,  and  therefore  their  integrity  is  not 
threatened.  This  is  the  reason  why  we  say  valleys,  keys, 
rays,  boys,  chimneys,  and  monkeys,  for  the  use  of  vallies,  mon- 
ies, and  monkies  is  in  reality  incorrect  spelling,  from  a  want 
of  attention  to  the  principle  which  underlies  these  by  no 
means  arbitrary  rules.  For  even  in  verbs  the  same  law  is 
observed,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  difference  between  he  de- 
nies and  he  delays.  Thus  we  also  say  heroes,  calicoes,  and 
echoes,  but,  thanks  to  the  additional  vowel, /o/^os  and  nuncios. 
The  very  exceptions  which  are  occasionally  quoted  against 
the  rule,  the  words  ladies,  sympathies,  etc.,  find  an  easy  and 
satisfactory  explanation  in  the  fact  that  their  present  form 
in  y  is  modern,  whilst  formerly  they  were  written  with  ie 
at  the  end. 

Our  English,  like  most  languages,  limits  the  use  of  cer- 
tain nouns  to  one  number  alone,  whenever  the  meaning 
suggests  such  a  regulation.    We  use  no  singular  of  bellows. 


180  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

scissors,  lungs,  spectacles,  whiskers,  drawers,  and  small-clothes. 
because  their  duality  instinctively  requires  and  admits  of 
nothing  but  a  plural  form.  Others,  again,  are  employed  in 
a  collective  meaning,  and  then  must  needs  be  singular 
only ;  such  are  sheep,  deer,  neat,  horse,  and  swine,  a  usage 
which  was  probably  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  most  of 
these  words  had  no  plural  in  Anglo-Saxon  and  even  in  Old 
English.  Mandeville,  at  least,  uses  swyn,  hors,  and  scheep 
for  both  numbers  alike.  This  does  not,  of  course,  exclude 
their  ordinary  use ;  and  thus  we  find,  in  Levit.  xi.  7,  "  and  the 
swine  though  he  divide  the  hoof;"  and  in  Shakespeare, 
^'  pearl  enough  for  a  swine."  In  like  manner  are  horse  and 
foot  used  when  they  stand  for  infantry  and  cavalry,  and  sail 
in  nautical  language.  A  few  of  our  nouns  make  a  nice  dis- 
tinction of  meaning  in  the  singular  and  the  plural.  3Ian- 
ner  is  a  very  different  thing  from  manners,  as  when  Ben 
Jonson  already  says,  "  wheresoever  manners  and  fashions 
are  corrupted."  The  practices  of  a  lawyer  are  well  to  be 
distinguished  from  the  practice  he  may  have  in  cross-ques- 
tioning, as  the  mean  or  average  income  is  not  always  within 
the  means  of  everybody.  A  lad  of  good  parts  may  take 
part  in  an  enterprise  ;  and  color  has  nothing  to  do  with  its 
plural,  as  "I  must  advance  the  colors  of  my  love."  —  J/er- 
ry  Wives,  III.  4.  A  minute  belongs  to  time,  minutes  are 
written  down.  The  "  Spectator  "  (454)  says  :  "  I  writ  down 
these  minutes^^  which  shows  the  remarkable  change  this 
word  has  undergone  since  the  days  of  Old  English.  Then 
it  meant  something  very  different,  as  may  be  seen  from 
Wickliffe's  Bible,  St.  Mark  xii.  42,  where  he  says,  "  But 
whanne  a  pore  widowe  was  come,  sche  cast  two  mynutys,  that 
is  a  farthing."  From  this  meaning  is  derived  the  con- 
tracted form,  mite,  of  our  day,  which  has  since  held  its 
place  by  the  side  of  its  richer  brother  minute, ']\\st  as  7nart% 
has  its  special  meaning  alongside  of  the  fuller  market. 

The  only  other  plural  termination  of  our  English  which 
claims  attention  by  the  side  of  the  almost  universal  s  is  en. 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  181 

which  seems  to  have  given  way^ore  slowly  than  the  other 
inflections.  It  begins  to  be  rare  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  Spenser  uses  it  together  with  s,  employing  eyen  when 
he  wishes  it  to  rhyme  with,  pine,  and  eyes,  when  there  is  no 
such  reason.  In  Sackville's  "  Mirror  for  Magistrates  "  we 
read,  — 

"  The  wrathfull  winter,  proching  on  apace 
With  blustering  blasts  has  all  ybarde  the  treen;  " 

and  in  Fairfax's  famous  translation  of  Tasso,  (XVII.  49,) 

which,  to   be  sure,  though  later  in   date,  follows  Spenser 

very  closely,  we  have,  — 

"  While  thus  the  Princess  said,  his  hungry  eine 
Adrastus  fed  on  her  sweet  beauties'  light." 

Housen,  as  well  as  hosen,  was  used,  with  other  similar 

forms,  as  late   as  the   seventeenth  century,   and  in   the 

"  Gilderoy  Ballad  "  of  that  age  we  find,  — 

"  Gilderoy  was  a  bonnie  boy 
Had  roses  tull  his  shoone, 
His  stockings  were  of  silken  soy 
Wi'  garters  hanging  doune," 

and  in  another  place  — 

"  Oh  sike  twa  charming  een  he  had, 
A  breath  as  sweet  as  rose.'* 

SJioon  is,  by  the  way,  a  comparatively  modem  form,  fre- 
quently used  by  Shakespeare,  very  common  as  a  provincial 
term  in  Cheshire  and  Leicestershire,  and  used  by  Byron  in 
his  "  Childe  Harold  :  "  "  He  wore  his  sandal  shoon." 

The  south  of  England  is  especially  fond  of  these  older 
plurals,  and  abounds  with  pleasen  (places),  sloen,  cheesen, 
and  peasen.  Oxen  is,  of  course,  quite  orthodox.  Kine 
comes  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  word  cu,  which,  being  a  strong 
noun,  made  its  plural  in  ci/en,  although  in  Percy's  "  Relics  " 
(III.  120)  it  appears  as  kye  simply.  Macaulay  indorses  the 
word  by  saying  (  "  Hist,  of  England,"  Y.  30)  :  "  His  stores 
of  oatmeal  were  brought  out,  the  kine  were  slaughtered." 

A  double  plural   form,  arising  from  the  fact  that  here 


182  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

also  the  original  inflectidn  no  longer  conveyed  to  the 
people  at  large  a  precise  meaning,  occurs  in  many  modern 
nouns.  We  say  brethren  from  the  strong  plural  hrether, 
with  the  addition  of  cw,  and  mean  by  it  the  same  as  by 
brothers,  but  use  it  only  in  strong  and  scriptural  language 
instead  of  the  latter.  Thus  in  Byron,  "  Call  not  thy 
brothers  brethren  /  Call  me  not  mother  ! "  Child  made 
originally  only  childer,  after  the  fashion  of  the  Old  Norse 
plural,  preserved  in  German  neuters.      Percy's  "  Relics  " 

(n.  94)  has,  — 

"  It  was  no  childer  game." 

Now  we  add  the  ending  en,  and  contract  both  into  children, 
A  few  plural  forms  are  now  used  with  a  singular  mean- 
ing, —  another  evidence  of  the  readiness  with  which  in  a 
changing  language  the  first  meaning  of  certain  inflections 
is  forgotten  by  the  people.  Our  word  kitten  was  originally 
the  plural  of  kit,  a  diminutive  made  from  cat,  according  to 
early  Gothic  usage,  the  c  being  changed  into  k  to  preserve 
its  hard  sound  before  the  vowel  ^,  just  as  we  change  candle 
into  kindle.  In  like  manner  cock  makes  first  chick,  and 
then  in  the  plural  chicken,  which  we  now  use  as  a  singidar 
by  the  side  of  the  former,  for  "  a  pretty  chick,"  is  still  a 
common  expression,  and  "  the  old  gentleman  had  neither 
chick  nor  child,"  used  by  Warren,  shows  the  former  mean- 
ing. It  was  only  about  the  time  of  Wallis,  as  he  tells  us 
himself,  that  chicken  began  to  lose  its  plural  meaning  ;  and 
we  are  told  that  in  Sussex,  to  this  day,  the  people  would 
as  soon  think  of  saying  oxe7is  as  chickens. 

Twin  is  the  sole  remnant  in  English  of  the  old  Saxon 
dual ;  it  is  the  same  as  our  now  unfashionable  twain  from 
twa.  Few  of  us  think  of  garden  as  a  plural,  and  yet  it 
belongs  as  such  to  gard  or  yard,  as  stocking  is  an  ill-treated 
form  of  the  genuine  stocken,  as  used  by  Spenser,  from  the 
singular  stock.  Still  less  is  it  commonly  known  that  the 
poetical  word  welkin,  as  in  Milton's  line,  — 

^'  From  either  end  of  heav'n  the  welkin  burns 
With  feats  of  arms," 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  183 

is  the  plural  of  a  now  obsolete  word  welcy  the  German 
Wolke,  for  which  we  now  substitute  cloud.  In  Archbishop 
Aelfric's  Vocabulary,  the  oldest  work  of  that  description  in 
the  English  language,  we  find,  "  nubes :  wolc  ;  "  but  in  the 
days  of  Shakespeare  even,  the  plural  had  already  an  air  of 
affectation.  Hence  the  Clown  in  "Twelfth  Night"  (HI.  1) 
says  to  Viola,  "  Who  you  are  and  what  you  would,  are  all 
out  of  my  welkin.  I  might  say,  element ;  but  the  word  is 
overworn,"  where  of  course,  welkin  is  intended  to  be  even 
more  "  overworn."  In  another  place,  however,  the  poet 
says  simply,  "  She  is  the  weeping  welkin,  I  the  earth ; "  now 
its  use  is  confined  to  the  phrase  of  "  making  the  welkin 
ring." 

Nothing  appears  at  first  sight  simpler  than  the  plural 
men,  made  after  the  manner  of  strong  nouns  from  man,  and 
yet  we  find  in  it  a  curious  historical  illustration.  Whilst  we 
say  regularly  women,  countryme^i,  and  horsemen,  we  employ 
Germans  and  'Normans,  not  from  any  difference  of  origin 
or  nature  in  these  words,  but  because  at  the  time  when 
they  entered  the  English  through  the  French,  the  latter 
were  no  longer  aware  and  conscious  of  their  derivation 
from  Ger  or  Wer-man  and  North-man,  and  hence  treated 
the  whole  as  a  proper  name. 

An  apparent  plural,  also,  is  found  in  many  English 
nouns,  and  has  led  to  serious  errors  in  some  of  the  best 
of  our  grammars.  Alms  is  so  far  from  being  an  English 
plural,  that  it  is  rather  a  Greek  singular ;  for  the  biblical 
word  iXerjfxoa-vvrj  was,  by  our  Anglo-Saxon  fathers,  already 
contracted  into  almesse,  as  in  Chaucer, — 

"  This  almesse  shouldst  thou  do  of  thy  proper  things," 

and  thence  into  the  form  now  in  use.  Riches,  on  the  con- 
trary, is  the  mutilated  form  of  the  French  "  richesse,"  and 
Ben  Jonson  is  incorrect  when  he  says,  — 

"  Riches  are  in  fortune  a  greater  good  than  wisdom  is  in  nature," 

although  now  it  has  so  completely  usurped  the  force  of  a 


184  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

plural  -that  to  use  it  otherwise  would  appear  singular. 
Bellows^  from  the  old  French  "  baleys;"  has  been  more  for- 
tunate, for,  although  frequently  treated  as  a  plural,  Shakes- 
peare says,  correctly,  ("  Pericles,"  I.  2,)  "  Flattery  is  the 
bellows  blows  up  sin,"  and  more  recently  Longfellow  has,  — 
"  They  watched  the  laboring  bellows 
And  as  its  panting  ceased." 

Summons  is,  like  alms,  an  ancient  word,  being  the  con- 
tracted "submoneas,"  a  well-known  legal  term,  made  of 
the  verb  after  the  manner  of  "  fieri  facias,"  "  habeas,"  "  ca- 
pias," etc.,  and  hence  we  can  hardly  approve  of  Waller's 

"  Love's  first  summons 
Seldom  are  obeyed," 

though  we  ought  to  be  thankful  when  we  are  not  offended 
by  the  worse  and  vulgar,  but  by  no  means  unfrequent, 
form  "  summonses." 

Among  the  doubtful  words  which  even  now  are  found 
used  in  both  numbers,  must  be  counted  News,  derived  from 
"  nouvelles,"  and  hence  of  old  always  a  plural.  Roger  As- 
cham  says,  about  1550:  "There  are  many  news;"  and 
Milton  has,  in  his  "  Samson  Agonistes  "  :  "  Suspense  in 
news  is  torture,  speak  them  out."  But  already  Shakespeare 
showed  both  forms.  In  "Henry  VI.,"  Part  1. 1.  4,  he  has: 
"  Whither  go  these  news  ; "  and  in  the  same  play,  V.  3 : 
"  This  news."  The  latter  is  now  probably  the  more  gen- 
eral form,  and  we  hear  rarely  otherwise  than  "  This  is  good 
or  bad  news,"  or,  as  custom,  in  the  words  of  Trinculo  con- 
cerning necessity,  makes  words  "  acquainted  with  strange 
bedfellows,"  even  "  old  news."  Tidings  are,  we  ought  to 
say  is,  in  the  same  predicament,  for  it  also  is  used  by 
Shakespeare  now  as  a  singular  and  now  as  a  plural,  though 
neither  new  nor  tiding  exist  in  English. 

A  common  error  limits  us  in  the  use  of  hair  to  the  sin- 
gular ;  the  plural  has  no  less  authority  in  its  favor.  "  His 
hairs  are  gray,"  in  the  "  Last  Minstrel,"  and  "  These  hairs  of 
mine,"  in  Byron,  are  not  merely  poetical  licenses,  for  we 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  185 

have  also  "  His  [Cicero's]  silver  hairs  will  purchase  us  a 
good  opinion."  Wages  and  dregs,  ashes  and  pains,  belong 
to  the  same  class  of  words.  The  few  foreign  plural  forms 
which  have  still  held  their  own  in  English  are  all  the  more 
interesting  because  they  must  have  possessed  peculiar 
strength  to  resist  the  influence  of  a  languasje  which  has 
shown  such  unsurpassed  power  of  receiving  foreign  ingre- 
dients, and  of  naturalizing  and  converting  them  from  aliens 
into  useful  citizens.  This  seems  a  peculiarity  not  only  of 
the  Saxon  tongue  but  of  the  Saxon  race.  The  most  strik- 
ing evidence  of  this  quality  may  be  seen  in  the  truly  mar- 
velous power  of  absorption  which  it  shows  especially  in 
the  Western  States  of  North  America.  In  the  Union  the 
German  lays  aside  his  Teutonic  character,  the  Celt  forgets 
his  own  feud,  and  sees  his  son  assume  the  garb,  the  princi- 
ples, the  very  name  of  the  Saxon.  Here,  most  striking  of 
all,  the  Jew  even  loses  his  ancient  marks,  because  here 
alone,  on  the  whole  globe,  he  is  not  persecuted  by  the 
Saxon,  and  thus  is  stripped  of  that  strength  which  is  every- 
where else  mainly  derived  from  the  ever-pressing  necessity 
of  resistance. 

We  have  French  plurals,  as  in  heaux,  messieurs,  and  mes- 
dames,  and  Italian  plurals  in  virtuosi,  banditti,  and  conversa- 
zioni. The  form  of  the  plural  is,  moreover,  frequently  a 
sure  sign  of  the  naturalization  of  a  foreign  word.  When 
we  find  that  Holland  makes  "  ideae,"  we  may  safely  assume 
that  it  was  to  him  yet  a  Greek  word ;  to  us  it  is  English, 
and  we  make  ideas.  Hammond  has  "  dogmata  "  for  our 
dogmas,  though  the  former  is  still  in  use,  together  with  mi- 
asmata and  lemnata.  Spenser  makes,  after  Greek  fashion, 
three  syllables  of  heroes,  where  we  have  but  two;  and 
even  the  metrical  accent  alone  betrays  Pope's  views  on 
satellites,  when  he  says,  — 

"Why  Jove's  satellites  are  less  than  Jove." 

When  we,  in  our  day,  use  a  foreign  word  as  such,  we 


186  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

give  it  the  plural  it  had  in  its  own  tongue ;  and  thus  we 
say  errata^  hypotheses^  phenomena^  appendices,  vases,  bases, 
formulce,  larvce,  magi,  and  data.  Where  we  treat  them  as 
naturalized,  they  have  an  English  plural,  as  waltzes  and 
bandits.  Many  are,  even  now,  in  a  transition  state ;  our 
railways  have  accustomed  us  to  the  use  of  ''  terminus  "  and 
many  say,  already,  terminuses,  while  others  still  adhere  to 
termini.  In  a  few  instances  we  meet  with  a  foreign  and 
an  English  plural  in  the  same  word,  attributed  to  two  dif- 
ferent meanings ;  thus  indexes  are  tables  of  contents,  but 
indices  only  signs,  and  geniuses  are  men  of  genius,  genii 
fabulous  beings. 

Hardly  less  important  than  the  consideration  of  case 
and  number  is  the  gender  of  nouns,  although  this  feature 
seems  to  be  fading  away  entirely  from  our  language.  In 
this  disappearance  of  one  of  the  most  striking  features  lies 
a  marked  difference  between  ancient  languages,  and  with 
them  modern  French,  on  one  hand  and  English  on  the 
other.  There  the  gender  is  permanently  fixed  and  of  par- 
amount importance,  here  it  is  barely  perceptible  and  fre- 
quently changeable  at  will. 

The  mature  and  severe  character  of  our  English  fur- 
nishes a  partial  explanation  of  this  remarkable  restriction. 
An  abundance  of  forms  of  gender,  in  fact  the  use  of  a 
transferred  gender  altogether,  belongs  exclusively  to  two 
classes  of  nations.  They  are  either  still  so  young  as  to  as- 
cribe, from  ignorance  and  the  abundance  of  their  own  life, 
a  sex  to  lifeless  objects,  as  men  do  in  their  infancy ;  or 
they  are,  even  in  maturity,  endowed  with  such  activity  of 
fancy  that  they  live  rather  in  an  imaginary  than  in  the 
real  world.  The  former  find  their  representative  in  some 
of  the  Algonquin  tribes,  the  latter  in  the  German.  The 
English,  as  a  people,  are  no  longer  children,  nor  are  they 
endowed  with  unnatural  liveliness  of  imagination.  Hence 
they  have  abandoned  gender  as  they  have  approached  ma- 
turity.     For  when  the  quick  fancy  of  childlike  nations 


HOW   NOUNS  ARE  USED.  187 

gradually  shrinks  back  into  its  legitimate  dimensions,  and 
the  cooler  judgment  of  fuller  knowledge  assumes  the  con- 
trol, the  artificial  gender  is  everywhere  seen  to  disappear 
by  itself  or  to  be  discarded  as  a  useless  incumbrance.  The 
sensuous  element  loses  its  influence,  and  the  power  of  ab- 
straction asserts  its  claims  more  and  more.  This  does  not, 
by  any  means,  exclude  the  legitimate  use  of  fancy  as  one 
of  the  powers  of  the  national  mind  reflected  in  the  lan- 
guage. Even  in  English,  although  we  have  nearly  aban- 
doned the  idea  of  gender  altogether,  we  are  by  no  means 
without  numerous  instances  of  qualities,  limbs,  or  even 
agencies,  which  we  daily  attribute  to  lifeless  things,  espe- 
cially to  features  in  the  landscape  that  surrounds  us.  A 
chair  has  its  legs,  a  hill  a  foot,  a  mountain  a  shoulder,  a 
head,  and  a  crest,  it  may  even  boast  of  one  or  several 
spurs.  The  needle  has  an  eye,  and  a  sofa  two  arms ;  a 
saw  has  its  teeth,  which  it  shares  with  a  comb,  and  a  bottle 
a  neck ;  the  waves  have  a  breast,  the  ships  their  ribs,  and 
even  cabbage  has  a  head.  In  like  manner  we  ascribe 
functions  of  various  kinds  to  mere  helpless  instruments, 
and  give  them  names  accordingly.  Thus  we  speak  of  mon- 
keys, hydraulic  rams,  and  chevaux-de-frise.  We  cut  figures 
and  letters  in  the  living  rock ;  the  earth  breathes ;  and  mer- 
cury is  to  our  eye  quicksilver.  The  hungry  ocean  demands 
its  victims,  and  the  thirsty  earth  eagerly  drinks  in  the  wel- 
come rain.  A  lane  may  be  a  blind  alley,  and  a  trial  of 
swiftness  often  ends  in  a  dead  heat.  What  would  our  poetry 
be  without  such  license  and  such  play  of  fancy,  and  how 
could  we,  without  it,  appreciate  the  beauty  of  the  Psalmist, 
who  makes  the  hills  clap  their  hands,  and  the  valleys  laugh 
and  sing  ? 

Notwithstanding  this,  our  English  surpasses  in  the  sim- 
plicity of  gender  all  other  languages,  and  has  established 
its  claim  to  be  considered  the  most  philosophic  among 
idioms.  It  has,  alone,  succeeded  in  freeing  itself  perfectly 
of  all  control  in   point  of  gender  by  the  mere  form  of 


188  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

words,  -and  with  it  of  a  genuine  incumbrance  of  speech. 
For  the  three  personal  genders  of  words  conduce  neither 
to  perspicuity  nor  to  energy ;  the  distinction  must  needs  be 
a  purely  artificial  one,  a  mere  fiction,  in  a  large  number  of 
words,  that  is  in  all  that  express  inanimate  objects,  having 
no  real  ground  in  the  nature  of  things.  Now  our  English 
is  a  practical,  business-like  language  ;  it  is  not  imaginative, 
like  its  German  sister.  It  rejects,  therefore,  all  mere  me- 
chanical attributes  of  gender,  without  abandoning  in  any 
way  its  clear  right  to  ascribe  sex  to  lifeless  objects  for 
special  purposes.  By  means  of  thus  discarding  gender  as 
a  common  rule,  it  has  gained  for  its  poets  and  orators  the 
right  of  personifying  abstract  ideas  and  giving  life  to  inan- 
imate objects.  Making  a  sparing  use  of  this  power  to  in- 
vest them,  for  the  moment,  with  a  gender,  they  present 
them  far  more  vividly  and  impressively  to  our  imagination 
than  can  be  done  in  any  other  language.  How  graphic 
and  striking  is,  for  instance,  the  following  description  of 
law,  by  the  aid  of  this  power  of  our  language :  '*  Of  law 
no  less  can  be  acknowledged  than  that  her  seat  is  the 
bosom  of  God,  her  voice  the  harmony  of  the  world.  All 
things  in  heaven  and  earth  do  her  homage  ;  the  very  least 
as  feeling  her  care,  and  the  greatest  as  not  excepted  from 
her  power."  Substitute  here  its  for  her,  and  the  beauty  and 
force  of  the  sentence  are  seriously  impaired. 

This  manner  of  giving  gender  is  far  more  rational,  as 
will  be  seen  from  the  simple  fact  that  almost  every  nation 
has  its  own  peculiar  notions  connected  with  the  sex  to  be 
attributed  to  certain  lifeless  objects.  Now  mythology  sug- 
gests one,  now  history  another.  This  is  the  case,  among 
many  others,  with  the  words  sun  and  moon.  To  Greek 
and  Roman  the  former  was  masculine,  represented  by 
Phoebus  or  Sol,  and  the  latter  feminine,  as  Diana  or  Luna. 
Euripides,  on  one  occasion,  calls  them  father  and  mother ; 
and  Virgil  makes  them  brother  and  sister :  — 

"  Nec/ro<rt»  radiis  obnoxia  surgere  Luna."  —  Georg.  I.  396. 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  189 

In  Hebrew,  Sanscrit,  and  German,  the  result  is  reversed, 
the  sun  becoming  feminine,  the  moon  masculine  ;  in  mod- 
ern Russian  the  former  loses  its  sex  altogether,  and  becomes 
neuter.  The  German  notion  is  based  upon  Northern  my- 
thology, as  we  learn  from  the  prose  Edda :  "  Mundilfora 
had  two  children :  a  son,  Mani,  and  a  daughter,  Sol,  and 
she  became  the  wife  of  Tuisco."  This  influence  deter- 
mined the  gender  of  the  two  words  in  Anglo-Saxon  and 
Old  English.  In  a  Saxon  treatise  on  the  equinox  we  find : 
"  The  moon  has  no  light  but  of  the  sun,  and  he  is  of  all 
stars  the  lowest;"  and  in  one  of  the  Cott.  MSS.,  Tit.  A, 
3,  p.  63,  we  have :  "  When  the  sun  goeth  at  evening  un- 
der the  earth,  then  is  the  earth's  breadth  between  us  and 
the  sun,  so  that  we  have  not  her  light,  till  she  rises  up  at 
the  other  end."  But  when  the  classic  languages  began 
to  make  their  influence  felt,  first  through  the  Norman- 
French  and  afterwards  directly,  the  present  gender,  taken 
from  ancient  mythology,  established  itself  This  is,  how- 
ever, rare  yet  before  Shakespeare,  and  even  he  calls  ("  Hen- 
ry IV."  I.  2.)  "  the  blessed  sun  a  fair  hot  wench  in  flame- 
color'd  taffata."  Now,  when  we  speak  philosophically,  we 
designate  sun  and  moon  by  it,  as  already  Mandeville  ven- 
tured to  do,  saying,  "  God  loveth  it  more  than  any  other 
thing."  When  we  treat  them  poetically,  they  are  he  and 
she  to  us,  as  in  Milton  :  — 

"  As  when  the  sun,  new  risen, 
Looks  through  the  misty,  horizontal  air 
Shorn  of  his  beams ;  " 

and  in  Pope's  Homer :  — 

"  As  when  the  moon,  refulgent  lamp  of  night, 
O'er  heaven's  clear  azure  shed  her  sacred  light." 

In  this  aspect  the  English  differs  from  all  other  lan- 
guages. The  old  Greek  had  its  masculine  and  feminine, 
and  by  their  side  the  ovSirepov,  our  neuter,  but  originally 
meaning  simply  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  In  similar 
manner  we  find  the  North  American  Indians  speak  of  a  third 


190  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

gender,-  as  eunuch,  because  they  look  upon  it  in  the  light 
of  a  weakened  masculine.  The  Mongolian  idioms  know  no 
difference  of  gender.  The  Romance  languages  include  the 
neuter  of  the  Latin  in  their  masculine,  except  in  article  and 
pronoun.  The  Danish  has  one  common  gender  for  mascu- 
line and  feminine,  which  it  calls  the  personal  gender,  and 
another,  in  its  nature  neuter,  which  it  calls  impersonal. 
The  German  alone  has  preserved  all  three  genders,  both 
in  inflection  and  in  article.  The  English,  on  the  other 
hand,  shows  no  difference  of  gender  at  all  except  in  one 
single  form,  the  personal  pronoun. 

Saxon  words  lost  their  gender  with  their  termination. 
In  Anglo-Saxon  most  final  vowels  and  some  consonants 
were  attributed  to  one  or  the  other  gender  ;  but  already  in 
Old  English  all  these  vowel-endings  were  represented  by  a 
uniform  e,  —  e.  g.  Anglo-Saxon,  nama,  ende,  and  wudu ;  Old 
English,  name,  ende,  wode.  At  a  still  later  period  even 
this  c,  already  mute,  was  generally  laid  aside,  and  with  it 
the  last  visible  means  by  which  outwardly  to  distinguish 
gender. 

Foreign  words  lost  their  gender  in  the  process  of  natu- 
ralization. As  they  underwent  this,  they  often  became  so 
obscured  that  the  precise  original  meaning  was  no  longer 
sufficiently  clear  to  determine  the  gender.  Where  this  was 
not  the  case,  their  form  at  least  was  so  changed  that  they, 
like  the  Saxon  words,  lost  the  gender  with  the  termina- 
tion. We  find,  upon  closer  examination  of  Latin  words, 
that  wherever  the  nominative  disguised  the  true  root  of 
the  noun,  the  English  has  not  adopted  that  case,  but  an 
oblique  case,  in  which  the  true  and  full  root  makes  itself 
felt    Thus  we  find  we  have  adopted. 


not  comes,  but  comitem,  i 

md  hence 

our  (comte)  count 

"    margo  *'   marginera 
"    frons     "   frontem 
"    cohors  "  cohortem 
"    flos        "   florem 

margin, 
front. 

(cohort)  court 
flower. 

"    actio     "  actionem 

t( 

action. 

"   vox      "    vocem 

it 

voice. 

HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  191 

In  these  new  forms  there  is  no  trace  left  of  the  ancient 
gender  as  determined  by  the  Latin  rules.  Besides,  such 
words  as  have  come  to  us,  not  from  the  Latin  directly,  but 
through  the  French,  had  often  there  already  changed  the 
gender  and  thus  increased  the  confusion. 

Whatever  gender,  therefore,  can  be  found  in  modern 
English,  is  exclusively  artificial.  By  the  common  consent 
of  the  people  it  is  attributed  to  some  words ;  where  neces- 
sity calls  for  a  designation  of  a  sex,  it  is  made  for  the 
purpose,  but  without  ever  becoming  inherent.  A  gender 
merely  attributed  is  of  course  neither  permanently  fixed 
nor  absolutely  decided.  We  say  of  time  that  it  is  out, 
and  the  poet  says  that 

"  Time  maintains  his  wonted  pace," 

as  soon  as  he  ascribes  human  powers  or  qualities  to  time. 
The  philosopher  tells  us  of  thunder,  that  "  it  arises  when 
the  air  is  surcharged  with  electricity;"  and  the  poet 
again,  personifying  it,  says, 

"  the  thunder. 
Winged  with  red  lightning  and  impetuous  rage, 
Perhaps  has  spent  his  shafts."  —  Paradise  Lost,  I.  174. 

Love,  even,  is  sometimes  calmly  defined,  and  we  are  told 
that  "  it  is  one  of  the  affections  ; "  but  poets,  following,  prob- 
ably, the  example  of  classic  writers,  think  of  the  god  Amor, 
and  thus  say : 

"  Love  in  my  bosom  like  a  bee 
Doth  suck  AJs  sweet; 
Now  with  his  wings  he  plays  with  me, 

Now  with  his  feet."  —  Lodge's  Rosalind's  Madrigal. 

A  beautiful  use  of  attributed  gender  occurs  in  connec- 
tion with  the  word  night,  in  the  Book  of  Wisdom,  xviii. 
14:  "  While  all  things  were  in  quiet  silence  and  that  night 
was  in  the  midst  of  her  swift  course,  thine  almighty  word 
leaped  down  from  heaven,  out  of  thy  royal  throne,  like  a 
fierce  man  of  war,  into  a  land  of  destruction."  We  fancy 
we  can  listen  to  the  soft  and  silent  step  of  night  in  her 


192  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

swift  course,  while  the  word,  almighty,  leaps  in  his  power 
down  from  heaven.  "What  language,  with  a  permanently 
fixed  gender,  could  have  produced  so  powerful  an  impres- 
sion by  such  simple  means  ? 

The  ways  by  which  in  English  a  distinction  of  sex  is 
represented  externally  in  words  are  as  various  as  they  are 
numerous,  some  agreeing  with  those  employed  in  most  lan- 
guages, others  quite  peculiar  to  our  own.  Not  unfre- 
quently  we  possess  two  distinct  words  for  the  masculine 
and  the  feminine  of  the  same  being.  "VYe  have  man  and 
woman,  the  ancient  wifman,  to  which  the  German  in  its 
abundance  adds  a  neuter  form,  Weibsbild,  used  only  in  con- 
tempt. We  might  add  father  and  mother,  son  and  daughter, 
brother  and  sister,  king  and  queen,  nephew  and  niece,  lad  and 
lass,  sloven  and  slut,  wizard  and  witch.  The  same  applies 
to  animals,  where  we  meet  with  ram  and  ewe,  horse  and 
mare,  cock  and  hen,  milter  and  spawner,  drone  and  hee.  In 
a  few  cases  here  a  third  gender,  a  neuter,  is  developed  to 
designate  the  young,  in  whom  the  sex  does  not  matter  as 
yet,  and  thus  we  obtain  hull,  cow,  and  calf,  dog,  hitch,  and 
whelp.  There  seems  to  be  a  tendency  in  modern  English 
to  make  this  distinction  in  gender  much  nicer  and  more 
careful.  Thus  we  find  that  shrew  was  formerly  applied  to 
males  as  well  as  to  females,  while  we,  ungallantly,  confine 
it  to  the  latter.  Lover,  on  the  other  hand,  and  paramour, 
now  only  used  of  men,  were  formerly  used  of  both  sexes. 
Smollett's  "  Count  Fathom,"  published  in  1754,  says  still : 
"  These  were  alarming  symptoms  to  a  lover  of  her  delicacy 
and  pride."  Something  of  the  old  freedom  survives  in  our 
"  pair  of  lovers,"  or  "  they  were  lovers." 

Sometimes  the  expression  of  sex  is  accomplished  by  the 
addition  of  certain  syllables,  such  as  have  been  explained 
in  a  different  connection.  The  Saxon  er  gives  us  mascu- 
lines, the  Latin-French  ess  feminines.  Where  one  and  the 
same  form  has  to  serve  for  both  genders,  great  want  of 
clearness  and  often  confusion  is  the  necessary  consequence. 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  193 

Dancer  and  singer,  rival,  cousin,  witness,  parent,  student,  and 

many  others,  lead  to  that  difficulty  which  Crabbe  in  his 

"  Lover's  Journey  "  points  out :  — 

"  Gone  to  a  friend,  she  tells  me  —  I  commend 
Her  purpose,  —  means  she  to  a  female  friend  ?  " 

Quite  peculiar  to  English  is  the  use  made  of  personal 
pronouns  for  this  purpose,  but  its  extreme  awkwardness 
has  led  to  its  gradual  abandonment.  In  older  authors  it  is 
quite  frequent.  Fuller,  in  his  "  Comment  on  Ruth,"  (104,) 
speaks  of  a  shee-saint,  and  elsewhere  of  she-devils.  Shakes- 
peare, jocosely,  in  his  "  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,"  says : 
*'  Be  brief  my  good  she-Mercury. ''  The  "  Spectator  "  does 
not  disdain  using  she-knighterrant  and  she-Machiavels. 
Byron  goes  even  further,  and  ventures  upon  ''  on  their  she- 
parades,"  and  "  the  real  sufferings  of  their  she-condition." 
A  he-friend  would  seem  to  be  a  most  objectionable  expres- 
sion, and  yet  it  occurs  not  unfrequently  ;  with  animals  the 
result  is  less  unpleasant,  and  we  can  pass  a  he-  and  a  she- 
goat,  SL  he-  and  a  she-bear,  etc.  Generally,  however,  better 
words  exist  for  this  very  clumsy  contrivance,  which  is  now 
no  longer  found  in  careful  writers. 

The  increasing  influence  of  the  German  has  led  to  the 
adoption  of  a  system  which  is  there  very  common,  —  the  ad- 
dition of  a  word,  which,  in  itself,  expresses  clearly  sex  or 
gender.  Isaac  Disraeli  was  prpbably  the  first  who  intro- 
duced, from  the  Dutch,  the  word  fatherland  for  native  soil ; 
the  experiment  succeeded,  it  was  adopted  by  Byron  and 
Southey,  and  the  word  has  now  obtained  citizenship.  Then 
followed  mother-tongue  and  kindred  compounds ;  besides 
these  we  speak  of  mankind  and  womankind,  man-  and  maid- 
servant, beggar-man  and  -woman,  bondman  and  bond-maiden, 
gentleman  and  gentlewoman,  even  of  a  man-milliner,  and, 
upon  the  authority  of  the  "  Tatler,"  (226,)  of  a  man-mid- 
wife. Then  we  have  landZorc?  and  land/aofy,  ladyhivdi  and 
ladycloc^  (the  coccinea  septempunctata).  Among  animals 
names  are  favorite  means  to  mark  the  sex,  besides  the 
13 


194  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

words. taken  from  their  own  order,  as  cockrohin,  cockchafer, 
cock'  and  Aen-sparrow,  peacock  and  hen,  roebuck  and  doe, 
buck-rabhit  and  doe^  buck-hare,  hoar-cat,  buck-goat,  buck-co- 
ney, and,  in  Halliwell,  even  do^-hee.  A  dogfox  and  a 
bitch-fox  are  well  known  to  hunters ;  and  Moore  in  his 
SuiFolk  words  tells  us  quaintly  that  — 

"  Cock  robin  and  Titty  wren 
Are  the  Almighty's  cock  and  hen." 

The  employment  of  proper  names  extends,  of  course,  only 
to  the  usage  among  the  people  at  large,  in  familiar  language 
and  provincial  dialects.  The  common  people  dislike,  in  all 
cases,  the  abstraction  of  the  neuter  gender,  which  requires, 
as  it  were,  a  mental  effort  on  their  part,  for  which  they 
have  little  relish  ;  hence  to  them  every  thing  in  Nature  is 
he  or  she,  and  this  tendency  has  led  them  to  give  proper 
names  even  to  lifeless  objects.  Among  men  they  have 
a  jTomboy,  a  Tomfool  and  his  tomfoolery,  and  Tom  Thumb  ; 
Tomcats  and  Tabby  cats  are  familiar  terms.  Jbmtit  and 
Jenny  wren  among  birds,  and  Tom  and  Jenny  simply,  to 
designate  male  and  female  swans,  are  quite  vernacular  on 
the  Thames.  Robert,  or  the  more  familiar  Dobbin,  serves,  we 
know  not  why,  very  generally  for  horses,  and  for  our  friend, 
Bob  Robin  or  Bob  Redbreast.  In  Suffolk  we  hear  much 
of  Harry  Longlegs  or  Father  Longlegs  for  spiders,  and  of 
King  Harry  foi  the  goldfinch.  Edward  appears  only  as 
Neddy  for  the  patient  donkey,  and  Will  for  the  sea-gull, 
or  as  Billy  goat  coupled  with  Nanny  goat.  Michael  reap- 
pears as  Hedge  Mike  for  sparrow  ;  Gilbert,  as  Gib,  is  com- 
mon in  Northamptonshire,  and  used  by  Shakespeare  in 
«  Henry  IV.":  — 

"  I  am  as  melancholy  as  a  ^  cat ; " 
and  St.  Martin  has  given  his  name  to  the  swift  martins. 
Of  all  names,  however,  the  most  frequent  in  these  combi- 
nations is,  as  might  be  expected,  John,  or,  more  familiarly, 
Jack.  We  have,  in  our  own  order,  /ac^-of-all-trades,  Jack- 
a-lantern,  Jack-a-lent  (a  dolt),  Jacka&s,  Jackanapes,  Jack- 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  USED.  195 

pudding  (a  clown,)  Jach-idiV,  and  .Tb^w-a-dream.  Jackass,  be- 
longing to  our  friend  Neddy  technically,  a  yac^-hare,  and  a 
yac^-rabbit  among  quadrupeds  ;  jack  simply,  a  ^ac^-pike, 
and  SLjohndory  among  fishes ;  and  a  yac^-heron,  yac^-snipe 
andyac/^-curlew  among  birds.  The  centipede  is  more  com- 
monly known  as  Jbc^-with-many-feet ;  and  even  among 
plants  we  meet  with  .7«cM'-the-Bush,  or  y<?^w-behind-the- 
garden-gate.  A  still  more  remarkable  use  of  these  names 
is  their  attachment  to  lifeless  objects,  which  gives  us  Jack- 
hoot,  y«c^-chain,  and  a  roasting;;*«c^^,  the  companion  to  a 
spmnmg-jenny.  The  feminine  is  not  so  well  represented 
in  this  class ;  we  find,  however,  Jenny  wren,  occasionally 
Jenny  ass  by  the  side  of  Jack  ass,  and  the  hated  centipede 
once  more  familiarized  as  ,7e?iwy-spinner  or  Je/iTiy-nettles 
in  Lanark,  as  Maggy  Monyfeet  in  Scotland.  Then  we 
have  Poll  parrots,  J^^pies,  the  "  Margots  "  of  the  French, 
(from  Margaret,)  and  Madge  or  JI/ac?^ehowlet  for  a  small 
owl.  In  Norfolk,  and  probably  elsewhere,  the  five  fingers 
are  humorously  endowed  with  proper  names,  as  Tom 
Thumbkin,  Will  Wilkin,  Long  Gracious,  Betty  Bodkin,  and 
Little  Tit. 

Quite  a  curious  usage  belonging  to  this  class  of  expres- 
sions is  the  tendency  to  add  horse  to  other  words,  in  order 
to  indicate  their  strength,  large  size,  or  coarseness,  as  in 
Aorse-radish,  ^orse-walnut  and  -chestnut,  in  ^orse-emmet, 
^orse-leech,  ^orse-muscle  and  ^orse-crab,  until  it  is  trans- 
ferred even  to  a  /^orse-laugh  and  a  ^orse-medicine.  The 
gigantic  size  and  defiant  attitude  of  the  largest  rush  has 
procured  for  it  the  name  of  Jw^rush,  but  it  is  not  quite 
as  clear  why  another  plant  of  almost  equal  dimensions 
should  have  to  be  contented  with  the  name  of  cot^-cabbage. 


CHAPTER  XL 


HOW  NOUNS   ARE   ABUSED. 


"  Sunt  fata  verbis." 

As  we  have  seen  that  words  consist,  like  ourselves,  of 
a  body  and  a  soul,  the  outward  form  and  the  inner  mean- 
ing, there  is,  of  course,  also  a  double  history  connected 
with  these  two  parts.  The  form,  being  dependent  on  the 
uttered  sound  or  its  written  sign,  is  subject  to  a  number 
of  external  influences  ;  and  the  meaning  given  it  by  a  na- 
tion which  passes  through  its  childhood,  youth,  manhood 
and  old  age,  will  naturally  in  like  manner,  undergo  various 
changes,  keeping  pace  with  the  changes  in  thought  and 
feeling  of  the  mass  of  the  people.  In  many  cases  these 
modifications  amount  to  so  little,  perhaps  only  to  a  slightly 
altered  spelling,  a  contraction  or  a  widening  of  sound,  that 
we  pass  it  by  as  a  necessary  and  natural  effect  of  the  influ- 
ence of  time.  In  other  cases,  however,  violence  has  appar- 
ently been  done  to  words :  their  form  has  been  twisted, 
their  dimensions  have  been  curtailed,  or  their  meaning  has 
been  so  completely  changed,  that  it  requires  diligent  search 
and  careful  comparison  to  establish  the  identity  of  the  orig- 
inal form  with  its  modern  descendants.  Such  cases  are, 
if  not  always  interesting,  yet  rarely  otherwise  than  instruc- 
tive ;  they  give  evidence  of  what  might  be  fairly  called  the 
inner  life  of  a  language,  and  as  the  English  language  pre- 
sents some  of  the  most  remarkable  changes  of  this  kind,  it 
may  not  be  amiss  to  look  into  the  history  of  some  at  least 
with  greater  care.  , 

A  large  and  important  number  of  words  in  English  have 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.  197 

undergone  a  serious  contraction  either  from  misapprehen- 
sion of  their  original  form  or  from  sheer  caprice  and  abuse. 
This  applies  most  naturally,  perhaps,  to  French  words  in- 
troduced at  various  periods,  and  used  by  persons  not  famil- 
iar with  the  idiom  from  which  they  were  borrowed.  There 
has  been  no  period  in  England's  history  when  her  French 
scholars  have  not  been  more  or  less  in  the  predicament 
of  the  nun  whom  old  Dan  Chaucer  introduces  to  us  so 
quaintly  as,  — 

"  A  Nonne,  a  Prioresse, 

That  of  hire  smiling  was  ful  simple  and  coy  . . . 

And  frenche  she  spake  ful  fayre  and  fetishly 

After  the  schole  of  Stratford  atte  Bowe, 

For  frenche  of  Paris  was  to  her  unknowe." 

Cant.  Tales,  118. 

What  with  mispronouncing  first  and  misspelling  after- 
wards, French  words  soon  lost  their  native  graces  and  be- 
came unmeaning  in  English.  Thus  pierre  (stone)  became 
pier  ;  peluche,  plush  ;  gueule,  jowl  or  jole ;  chassis,  sash; 
issuer  (exire),mwe  and  sewer  ;  vestiaire  (vestiarium),  vestry ; 
chauffer,  chafe  2indi  chaff;  fatigue,  simple /«y;  and  blaspheme, 
either  blaspheme  or  blame.  Feuille  was  Anglicized  iwio  foil, 
tuile  into  tile.  Linon  was  made  lawn  ;  volee,  volley  ;  and  tri- 
omphe  was  already  in  the  days  of  Norman  rule  reduced  to 
trump  and  trump  cards.  Baluster,  from  the  French  balustre, 
is  now  universally  called  and  spelt  banister,  tourniquet  is 
shortened  into  turnkey,  and  p§le-m^le  into  pell-mell,  if  not 
even  into  PaU  Mall. 

This  is,  after  all,  but  the  common  fate  of  foreign  words, 
ill  understood  and  hence  ill  pronounced.  The  same  pro- 
cess changed  the  mystic  words  of  our  religion,  Hoc  est  cor- 
pus, into  vulgar  hocus  pocus  ;  the  Latin  hilariter  et  celer- 
iter  into  helter  shelter  ;  postumus  into  a  idhnlons,  posthumous  ; 
the  Spanish  cigara  into  anomalous  segar ;  and  carnelian, 
from  its  resemblance  to  the  color  of  flesh,  (caro,  carnis,) 
into  cornelian. 

Where  the  French  has  furnished  us  with  .special  or  tech- 


198  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

nical  terms,  and  these  have  undergone  similar  changes,  the 
derivation  is  of  course  not  always  quite  so  clear,  and  must 
be  accepted  with  some  caution.  Tennis  comes  to  us,  we 
know  well,  from  the  exclamation  Tenez!  used  at  hitting, 
as  Tally  ho  !  is  the  naturalized  form  of  the  Au  Taillis  !  of 
the  French.  Whether  omelet  really  represents  the  oeufs 
mel^s  of  the  French  is  more  doubtful ;  and  jeopardy  has 
more  than  one  pedigree,  that  of  "  jeu  perdu  "  or  "jeu  parti," 
the  game  is  gone,  being  the  most  probable,  from  the  fol- 
lowing lines  of  Chaucer :  — 

''  And  when  he  through  his  madness  and  folie 
Hath  lost  his  owen  good  ihurgli  jupartie 
Then  he  exciteth  other  folk  thereto." 

Many  French  terms  have  been  much  disguised  by  the 

simple  loss  of  an  initial  e,  frequently,  no  doubt,  caused  by 

an  indistinct  impression  of  its  being  an  article.     Thus  we 

have  proof  from  ^preuve,  tin  from  etain,  scum  from  ecume, 

pin  from  ^pingle,  and  escheat  as  well  as  cheat.    Etiquette  has 

become  a  ticket,  and  the  old  French  word  estrange  retains 

its  double  form,  as  in 

"  How  comes  it  my  husband  oh ! 
How  comes  it, 
That  thou  art  thus  estranged  from  thyself?  " 

and 

"  Thyself  I  call  it,  being  strange  to  me."  —  Shakespeare. 

The  same  errors  which  in  olden  times  caused  so  much 
injury  are  committed  by  the  ignorant  in  our  own  day  with 
French  words  that  are  now  creeping  into  English,  and 
there  is  good  reason  for  us  to  pray  still,  with  our  Saxon 
ancestors  of  yore  in  their  Litany,  "  A  furore  normannorum 
libera  nos  Domine  !  " 

There  is  perhaps  more  excuse  for  the  contractions  which 
Latin  and  other  foreign  words  have  undergone  in  the  pro- 
cess of  naturalization.  That  d^avao-ta  and  Troi/aKcia  should 
have  shrunk  and  shriveled  into  tansy  and  pansy  is  cer- 
tainly quite  pardonable,  though  it  would  be  very  difficult 
now  to  trace  the  gradual  change  from  step  to  step.      We 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.  199 

know  better  how  'proxy  came  from  procuracy,  as  proctor 
from  procurator,  and  palsy  from  paralysis,  as  we  still  retain 
both  the  full  and  the  shortened  form.  The  French  "  fan- 
taisie,"  or  the  Greek  original,  gave  us  phantasy,  which  in 
Sylvester's  translation  of  Du  Bartas  is  already  "  phantsy," 
and  thus  shows  clearly  the  gradual  subsiding  into  modern 
fancy.  When  Hollingshed  says  of  brandy  "  it  lighteneth 
the  mind,  it  quickeneth  the  spirits,  it  cureth  the  hydropsy" 
he  gives  us  the  ancestor  of  our  shortened  dropsy.  A  curi- 
ous derivation  is  that  of  quinsy,  which  is  in  reality  the  same 
word  as  "  synagogue,"  coming  like  the  latter  from  crvv  and 
ayw,  to  draw  together,  which  became  afterwards  "  synanche." 
In  Holland's  Pliny,  x.  33,  we  find :  "  The  young  birds  of 
these  martins,  if  they  be  burnt  into  ashes,  are  a  singular  and 
sovereign  remedy  for  the  deadly  squinancie ;'^  whilst  Jeremy 
Taylor,  in  his  "  Holy  Living  and  Dying,"  has :  "  Without  rev- 
elation we  can  not  tell  whether  we  shall  eat  to-morrow  or 
whether  a  squinancy  shall  choke  us."  Furlong  is  of  course 
but  a  "  furrow  long,"  as  syrup  and  shruh  are  the  same. 
Cadet  is  from  capitellum,  as  it  were,  a  little  captain,  as 
cousin  is  from  consanguineus,  through  the  French  cousin, 
familiarly  contracted  further  into  cozzen.  Grant  comes  in 
like  manner  from  garantie,  whence  also  our  warrant ;  and 
the  law  terms  livery  and  seizin  are  nothing  but  our  ordinary 
delivery  and  'possession. 

The  same  unfortunate  tendency  to  save  breath  and  time 
has  led  to  a  worse  treatment  of  another  class  of  words, 
which  have  not  been  merely  contracted  but  actually  de- 
prived of  a  part  of  their  substance.  The  instances  in 
which  proper  names  have  suffered  thus  are  best  known. 
Great  and  noble  names  have  been  corrupted  to  mean  and 
base  uses.  There  is  said  to  be  a  family  in  existence  now, 
lineal  descendants  of  the  Plantagenets,  who  have  degen- 
erated into  Plant.  Everybody  has  heard  how  Admiral 
Vernon,  in  1739,  first  ordered  spirits  mixed  with  water  to 
be  dealt  out  to  his  sailors,  and  how,  being  commonly  dressed 


200  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

in  a  stuff  largely  used  in  the  West  India  islands  and  known 
as  grogram,  he  first  earned  that  nickname  for  himself,  and 
then  bestowed  it,  in  its  shortened  form  oi  grog,  upon  his  un- 
popular beverage.  Tram  roads  may  possibly  recall  to  us 
the  full  name  of  their  inventor,  Outram,  though  the  word 
is  said  to  occur  already  some  time  before  his  day  ;  and  gin  is 
perhaps  the  first  part  of  Geneva,  where  the  best  drink  of 
the  kind  was  distilled  in  former  days,  as  it  is  now  in  Hol- 
land, which  gives  us  the  name  of  Hollands.  St.  Mary  over 
the  River,  has  thus  dwindled  into  St.  Mary  Overy,  as  poor 
Magdalen,  the  repentant  sinner  with  her  abundant  tears, 
has  gone,  through  the  abbreviated  form  of  Maud,  finally 
into  maudlin. 

The  process  is,  however,  by  no  means  limited  to  proper 
names,  and  is  still  going  on,  in  our  day,  in  numerous  com- 
mon nouns,  although  here  also  foreign  nouns  have  naturally 
suffered  most.  This  is  all  the  more  to  be  regretted  as  the 
loss  of  a  part  of  the  form  almost  unavoidably  involves  the 
loss  of  a  part  of  the  meaning,  and  in  language,  as  in  society, 
half  words  are  the  perdition  of  women,  and  not  only  of 
women  but  of  all  who  employ  them.  The  very  reckless- 
ness of  the  changes  which  Addison  so  humorously  attributes 
to  the  "  English  delight  in  silence  "  and  their  tendency  "  to 
favor  their  natural  taciturnity  and  to  give  as  quick  a  birth 
to  their  conceptions  as  possible,"  is  remarkable,  for  it  seems 
to  be  a  mere  chance  whether  the  first  or  the  last  part  of  a 
word  is  to  be  sacrificed.  The  former  is  the  case  in  words 
like  omnibus  and  hus,  or  caravan  and  van,  which  are  fast 
becoming  legitimate,  the  latter  in  cabriolet,  citizen,  and  gen- 
tleman, which  are  as  rapidly  subsiding  into  cab,  cit,  and  gent. 
Thus  the  simple  aid  was  once  the  aide-de-camp  of  official 
language,  and  plot  used  to  appear  in  full  dress  as  complot. 
Mob,  from  the  "  mobile  vulgus,"  belonging  to  the  age  of 
Charles  II.  and  first  applied,  as  Lord  North  says,  to 
members  of  the  Green  Ribbon  Club,  together  with  sham, 
Macaulay  very  justly  called  "  remarkable  memorials  of  a 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.  201 

season  of  tumult  and  imposture,"  though  the  connection 
with  Whigs  and  Tories  at  which  he  points  has  not  yet 
been  fully  established.  We  can  see,  however,  how  slowly 
admission  is  gained  to  the  body  of  orthodox  English  words, 
from  the  hesitating  way  in  which  Addison  speaks  in  the 
"  Spectator  "  of  moh  and  incog :  "  As  all  ridiculous  words 
make  their  first  entry  into  a  language  by  familiar  phrases, 
I  dare  not  answer  for  these,  that  they  will  not  in  time  be 
looked  upon  as  a  part  of  our  tongue."  His  apprehensions 
have  been  fulfilled  with  regard  to  moh,  though  incog  can 
hardly  be  considered  yet  as  authorized  by  classic  writers. 
The  same  process  of  curtailment  has  reduced  the  buffalo 
of  the  American  continent,  perhaps  through  the  French 
"buffle,"  to  the  simple  huff,  now  the  color  of  tanned 
leather.  The  Latin  "  erinaceus  "  shows  a  curious  process 
of  gradual  reduction.  It  became  in  French  "  herisson," 
which  Mandeville  already  Anglicized  into  urchoune;  then 
it  became  Chaucer's  urchon,  and  thus  finally  our  own  ur- 
chin. Another  animal  thus  ill  treated  is  the  young  of  the 
frog  and  the  toad,  which  was  once  ceremoniously  "  toad- 
pullet,"  and  has  now  sunk  into  tadpole.  Phiz  is  a  very  early 
abbreviation  of  the  awkwardly  long  physiognomy,  as  prim- 
itive manners  are  now  more  frequently  called  prim.  A 
navvy,  whose  labors  on  countless  canals  and  in  the  Crimea 
have  earned  for  him  a  world's  respect,  is  but  the  half  of  a 
"  navigator ;  "  a  wig,  the  sad  remnant  of  the  stately  periwig, 
the  French  word  perruque,  first  made  Dutch  in  the  quaint 
form  oiparruik.  The  handiwork,  or  ;^etp  cpyoi/,  of  the  early 
leech  gave  rise  to  the  unintelligible  "c^z'rurgeon,"  whom  we 
now  simply  call  a  surgeon  ;  his  hospital  has  likewise  been 
shorn,  and  is  now  oflen  spital  only,  as  in  *Sjo^Va7fields  and 
Spital  Inn,  an  asylum  on  the  wildest  parts  of  Stainmore 
Fells,  erected  there,  as  in  other  waste  parts  of  the  kingdom, 
to  serve  as  a  traveler's  refuge.  Slang  terms  of  this  kind 
abound  in  all  directions ;  of  the  more  admissible  among 
them  Dickens's   "  whenever  I   saw  a  beadle  in  full  /^," 


202  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

refers,' of  course,  to^^ure,  as  "  to  go  "  or  "  to  live  on  tichy* 
has  reference  to  the  tich^i  received  at  the  pawnbroker's, 
from  which  is  derived  the  old  phrase  "  on  tick  and  on  bill." 
Flirt  is  not  unlikely  a  mutilated  form  of  the  French  fieu- 
rette,  which  an  ingenious  writer  in  "  Notes  and  Queries  "  com- 
pares to  the  Greek  rose,  of  which  Aristophanes  in  the 
"  Clouds  *'  says,  p6ha  fx  dp-qKas,  the  exact  counterpart  of  the 
French,  vous  rnHnventez  des  Jleurettes. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  features  connected  with  this 
maltreatment  of  certain  classes  of  words,  is  the  quaint  and 
often  exceedingly  amusing  manner  in  which  the  people  at 
large  have  endeavored  to  make  foreign  words  more  easy  of 
understanding  by  twisting  them  into  some  resemblance  of 
English  words.  This  tendency  ought  to  serve  us  as  a  warn- 
ing against  the  too  free  adoption  of  foreign  words,  the  form 
and  meaning  of  which  have  often  not  the  slightest  analogy 
to  our  own.  This  must  needs  produce  a  certain  confusion, 
especially  in  the  minds  of  the  uneducated ;  and  where  this 
is  not  the  case,  there  will  still  remain,  for  the  masses  at  least, 
little  more  than  a  conventional  meaning,  an  empty  and  un- 
real signification.  What  is  a  Pantheon  to  us,  who  believe 
either  in  one  God  or  none  at  all,  that  we  should  place  it 
in  the  midst  of  our  towns,  by  the  side  of  Christian  churches  ? 
If  we  attend  a  debating  club  at  a  Colosseum,  we  must  pre- 
pare ourselves  to  meet  colossi  only  in  their  own  estimation  ; 
and  wolves,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  have  long  since  ceased  to  be 
found  in  our  Lyceums,  as  long  since  as  Minerva,  we  fear, 
has  abandoned  our  Athenceums.  The  French  are  precisely 
in  the  same  predicament ;  there  is  something  irresistibly 
ludicrous  to  an  Englishman  in  their  advertisements  of  a 
houlingrin  vert  before  a  country-house,  or  of  roshifs  de  mou- 
ton  in  their  eating-houses,  terms  of  which  already  Voltaire 
felt  keenly  the  ridicule.  So  do  their  modern  Panorajna 
Universel,  their  feux  pyriques,  and  above  all  the  guerre 
polemique  of  the  clever  Ste.  Beuve  incur  the  sharp  but  well- 
deserved  criticism  of  their  distinguished  philologist  Nodier. 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.  203 

These  difficulties  are  peculiarly  great,  and  the  bad  results 
make  themselves  more  immediately  felt  in  the  case  of 
French  words  imported  into  our  tongue,  because  the  French 
language  has  itself,  long  ago,  lost  all  consciousness  of  its 
own  history.  What  Frenchman  thinks  nowadays  of  the 
Latin  vir,  when  he  speaks  of  vertu,  of  sus  Troja  in  his  truie^ 
of  jecus  jicatum  in  foie,  or  of  Gehenna  in  his  verb  gener? 
If  this  be  so  ii\  France,  how  much  more  obscure  must  such 
words  become  when  they  are  transferred  to  another  tongue ! 
Everybody  knows  our  dandelion,  or  dandy  lion,  as  it  was 
recently  printed  in  a  book  for  the  "  instruction  of  youth." 
Its  derivation  from  dent  de  lion  is  evident.  The  fair 
apple  of  France  there  known  as  belte  et  bonne,  is  vul- 
garized into  belly-bound;  the  beautiful  rose  des  quatre 
saisons  into  one  of  quarter  sessions,  whilst  the  polianthes 
tuberosa,  in  French  tubereuse,  which  was  nothing  more 
than  a  tuberous  plant,  is  forced  into  a  tuberose.  The  ad- 
mirable chaussees  of  the  Empire  a^re  in  England  cause- 
ways ;  their  ancien,  the  "Ancient  Cassio  "  of  Shakespeare, 
our  ensign ;  and  their  frere-magon,  we  hardly  know  how, 
with  us  a  freemason.  Their  contre  danse,  so  called  from 
the  couples  dancing  opposite  each  other,  has  become  a 
country-dance,  and  the  hautbois,  that  serves  in  the  or- 
chestra, by  a  ludicrous  association  with  a  boy,  a  hautboy. 
Animals  have  not  fared  any  better :  the  langouste  of  the 
French  coast  is  on  English  shores  a  longoyster ;  the  hog- 
fish,  or  porcpisce  of  Spenser,  becomes  a  porpoise  ;  and  the 
ecrevisse  of  our  French  neighbors  had  to  go  through  a 
series  of  transformations  in  three  languages  before  it  reached 
its  present  form.  It  started  from  the  Old  High  German 
krebiz,  which  reappeared  subsequently  in  English  as  crab, 
and  in  German  as  Krebs.  In  the  latter  form  it  crossed 
the  Rhine,  and  became  in  its  new  home  ecrevisse  ;  it  re- 
turned from  there  once  more  to  its  German  kindred  in 
England,  appearing  as  hrevys  in  Lydgate,  as  crevish  in 
Gascoyne,  as  craijish  in  Holland,  and  merging  finally,  with 


204  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

a  double  effort  at  Anglicizing  the  foreign  word  into  the 
modern  English  crawfish  or  crayfish. 

Another  word  that  has  been  a  sore  temptation  to  hasty 
etymologists  is  the  recently  revived  word  filibuster^  which 
has  in  a  similar  manner  returned,  much  reduced  in  form, 
like  the  prodigal  son,  from  foreign  lands.  It  was  originally 
the  English  word  fly-hoat ;  but  when  adopted  by  the  Span- 
iards, was  softened  by  them  into  "filibote"  or  "  flibote." 
Subsequently  it  found  its  way  back  into  English,  and  the 
outlandish  form  was  by  an  off-hand  etymology  changed  into 
filibuster,  with  some  reference,  perhaps,  to  the  American 
slang  term,  a  buster. 

The  sleeping  mouse,  or  souris  dormeuse,  is,  in  like 
manner,  but,  very  naturally,  transformed  into  a  dormouse  ; 
Xh^farci  of  French  cooks  mto  forced  meat;  and  their  quel- 
que  chose  into  our  kickshaw,  unless  there  should  be  some 
unknown  relation  existing  between  the  latter  part  of  the 
word  and  our  pshaw.  In  a  somewhat  similar  manner  the 
French  quand-aurai-je  became  our  quandary.  The  trans  - 
tion  from  the  redingote  to  a  riding-coat,  is  as  amusing  as 
that  from  the  ancient  vertugale  or  still  older  vertugadin  to 
a  farthingale,  a  word  made  afler  the  analogy  of  nightingale. 
The  French  rope-dancer's  soubresault,  from  Latin  supersaltus 
and  Italian  sobresalto,  was  already  in  Old  English  siimber- 
sault,  and  thus  became  with  a  double  association  of  ideas 
our  summerset.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  in  the  "  Tamer 
Tamed,"  have  still,  — 

"  What  a  somersah. 
"When  the  chair  fel,  she  fetch'd,  with  her  heels  upward !  " 

but  in  the  "  Fair  Maid  of  the  Inn  "  it  is  already  changed :  — 

"  Now  I  will  only  make  him  break  his  neck  in  doing  a  somerset,  and 
that 's  all  the  revenge  I  mean  to  take  of  him." 

Where  the  French  saw  with  the  eye  of  superstition  a  hand 
of  several  fingers,  a  mai7i  de  gloire,  we  discover  a  like- 
ness to  a  man's  two  legs,  and  call  the  same  root  mandragora, 
or  mandrake.     Equally  ludicrous  is  the  change  from  the 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.  205 

rightly  spelt  Oyez !  of  our  courts  to  the  ordinary  pro- 
nunciation, 0  Yes/  and  the  way  in  which  the  men  who 
were  stationed  by  the  king's  buvet  (from  boire,  anciently 
huver)  to  take  care  of  his  sideboard  and  costly  wines,  and 
who  in  England  waited  at  the  buffet,  a  table  near  the 
door  of  the  dining-hall,  with  viands  for  the  poor,  became 
first  buffetiers  and  then  vulgarly  known  as  beef-eaters. 
Even  phrases  can  be  traced  to  such  violent  twistings  of 
words,  as  the  proverbial  dormir  comme  une  taupe,  which 
has  lost  all  reference  to  the  mole,  and  is  now  to  sleep  like  a 
top,  and  the  faire  un  faux  pas,  to  commit  a  blunder,  which 
is  at  least  provincially  to  make  a  fox's  paw  I  How  not  only 
a  strange  form  but  a  whole  story  may  arise  from  such  an 
ill-treated  word  has  been  very  amusingly  established  by 
Mr.  Riley  in  his  learned  work  on  the  Guildhall  in  London. 
He  tells,  in  the  Preface,  that  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries  trading  was  in  London  called  achat,  from  the 
French  acheter.  This  foreign  word  was  commonly  pro- 
nounced acat,  and  came  soon  to  be  written  so.  To  acat 
of  this  kind  the  famous  lord  mayor,  Whittington,  was  in- 
debted for  his  wealth,  but  when  the  word  became  unfamiliar, 
and  finally  unintelligible  to  the  masses,  the  desire  for  some 
explanation  led  to  the  absurd  story  of  his  gaining  his  wealth 
by  a  cat  I 

Words  that  have  come  down  to  us  from  the  ancient  lan- 
guages have,  of  course,  still  less  meaning  left  in  their  altered 
form,  and  here  also  many  efforts  have  been  made  to  instill 
into  them  new  life  by  giving  them  a  somewhat  English  shape. 
Greek  names  of  plants  furnish  yXvKvs  pt^a  (the  sweet  root), 
which  was  once  glycorys,  and  is  now  liquorice  or  licorice, 
with  a  faint  reference  to  liquor ;  the  crrapts  aypia,  or  flea-wort, 
became  staves-acre ;  and  the  Kapvo(f>vX\ov,  already  in  Chaucer 
cloue  gilofre,  instead  of  the  true  French  form  clou  de 
girofle,  was  first  gilly-flower,  and  then,  on  the  lips  of  the 
ignorant,  even  July  flower.  The  ©rjpiaKr]  of  the  Greeks  un- 
derwent a  strange  series  of  changes  in  form  and  in  meaning. 


206  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

It  had  its  original  name  from  the  viper,  whose  own  flesh 
was  long  considered  the  best  if  not  the  only  remedy  for  the 
creature's  bite.  As  such  it  became  soon  a  famous  anti- 
dote, and  as  leech  was  once  the  common  name  of  all  follow- 
ers of  iEsculapius,  so  this  preparation  became  generally 
synonymous  with  medical  confection.  The  French  called 
it  then  theriaque,  which,  however,  Chaucer  already  cur- 
tailed to  triacle  ;  as  treacle  it  now  designates  simply  the 
sweet  syrup  of  molasses,  with  a  slight  hint  at  its  ^n'c^ling 
propensity.  Ignorance  transformed  tragacant  gum  into 
gum  dragon,  as  even  now  vcKpofxavTia,  or  necromancy,  the 
art  of  calling  up  the  dead,  etc.,  is  often  called  black  art, 
as  if  it  had  any  connection  with  a  pretended  iVeyromancy. 
Our  forefathers  already  mistook  the  Lydius  lapis  Graeco- 
rum,  and  called  it,  perhaps  with  reference  to  its  unusual 
weight,  or  because  it  attracts  iron,  loadstone,  just  as  they 
called  the  North  Star  the  "  leading  star  "  or  loadstar.  The 
translators  of  Holy  Writ  made  thus  emerods  out  of  hemorr- 
hoids, associating  their  infliction  with  the  idea  of  the  rod 
of  the  Lord ;  at  the  same  time  hemicrania  was,  through 
the  French  migraine  probably,  converted  into  megrim. 
We  still  speak  of  the  tiny  grapes  of  Corinth  as  currants, 
as  if  they  were  the  fruit  of  our  native  shrub  of  that  name  ; 
and  our  common  people  often  say  pottercarrier  for  apoth- 
ecary, as  Jack  calls  his  good  ship  Bellerophon  a  Billy 
Ruffian. 

Botanical  names  of  Latin  origin  have  led  to  similar  unin- 
tentional disguises.  Asparagus  is  better  known  as  sparrow- 
grass,  febrifuge  as  feverfew,  and  ros  marinus  as  rosemary. 
A  frontispicium  is  a  ivoii\Xspiece ;  and  since  the  lanterna 
of  the  ancients  has  been  made  of  thin,  split  layers  of  horn, 
it  has  become  a  lanthom.  The  rachitis  of  the  physician 
is  the  rickets  of  the  masses ;  the  selarium  of  convents  is 
our  salt-ce//ar;  and  the  viridumjus  of  the  dispensary  the 
verjuice  of  the  people.  The  Latin  viride  certs,  or  the 
French  vert    et  gris,  has    become  verdegris,  and  vulgarly 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.  207 

verdigrease.  Petrels,  or  Mother  Gary's  chickens,  are,  as  it 
were,  little  St.  Peters,  because,  like  the  Apostle,  they  can 
walk  on  the  water.  The  Ligurnum  of  Italy  was  changed 
into  Leghorn,  precisely  as  the  Italians  themselves  made 
their  Negroponte  out  of  the  Greek  name  Iv  'EyptVo). 

We  have  avenged  the  old  town  on  the  Italians  tenfold  ; 
we  call  their  articiocco  girasole,  a  sunflower  artichoke  which 
came  from  Peru  to  Italy  and  from  thence  to  us,  with  utter 
disregard  to  geography,  but  with  a  willful  appropriation  of 
the  girasole,  Jerusalem  artichoke,  and  even  make  of  it  a 
dish  called  Palestine  soup  ;  we  have,  in  like  manner,  changed 
their  renegade,  who  denied  his  faith,  into  a  runagate, 
their  lustrino  into  lutestring,  their  faruhala  into  furbelow, 
and  their  coasting  vessel  urea  into  a  simple  hooker. 

The  Spanish  cayo,  used  to  designate  a  rock  or  a  sand- 
bank, we  transform  into  a  key  ;  and  the  Indian  word  urican, 
which  has  served  to  make  the  French  ouragan,  reappears 
in  English  as  hurricane  (hurry  cane).  The  Spanish  call 
the  commander  of  a  fleet  with  an  Arabic  word  amiral : 
and  Milton  still  wrote  of  a  tree  fit  to  become  "  the  mast  of 
some  great  ammiral."  But  there  seems  to  have  early  arisen 
an  idea  that  the  name  had  something  to  do  with  admirable, 
and  hence  Latin  writers  of  the  Middle  Ages  already  are 
fond  of  styling  the  chief  naval  officer  admirabilis  or  admi- 
ratus,  from  which  we  derive  our  admiral. 

German  and  Dutch  words  have  not  been  exempted  on 
account  of  their  close  relationship.  The  hysenblas  of 
Holland,  meaning  the  bladder  of  the  fish  called  hysin, 
our  sturgeon,  is  now  ismglass.  The  German  Weremuth 
has  become  bitter  wormwood ;  the  lindwurm  of  noble  Sieg- 
fried, a  mean  blind-worm  ;  a  prophetic  Weissager,  a  contempt- 
ible wiseacre;  and  the  harsh  name  of  the  Rhenish  town 
Bacharach  is  often  found  in  old  English  plays  as  Backrag. 

The  farther  we  go  beyond  the  members  of  the  family  of 
languages  to  which  the  English  belongs,  the  more  diflicult 
is  it,  of  course,  to  trace  the  nature  of  this  change  and  natu- 


208  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

ralization.  The  Mount  Vidgeon  pea  of  our  gardeners*  cata- 
logues reminds,  probably,  few  readers  of  its  Montevidean 
origin,  and  the  familiar  nightmare  carries  still  fewer  back  to 
distant  Finland,  where  Mara^  the  fearful  elf,  inflicts  that 
punishment  upon  the  wicked  and  the  scorner.  The  common 
demijohn,  once  upon  a  time  spelt  damajan,  has  an  even 
more  remarkable  derivation  than  the  popular  but  apocryphal 
Dame  Jeanne,  commonly  quoted.  The  name  is  the  same 
as  that  of  a  city  in  Persia,  in  the  province  of  Khorassan, 
called  Damaghan,  where  formerly  a  famous  kind  of  glass- 
ware was  manufactured ;  the  Crusaders  were  struck  with 
certain  articles  of  this  ware,  and  brought  the  thing  and  the 
name  together  back  to  their  European  homes. 

The  most  remarkable  feature  connected  with  this  process 
of  giving  new  forms  and  new  meanings  to  words  which  are 
perfectly  extraneous  and  unconnected  with  their  history,  is, 
that  even  English  names  should  have  been  made  to  undergo 
such  a  change.  This  arose,  probably,  first  in  names  of  for- 
eign origin,  though  borne  by  English  families.  The  Flem- 
ish Tupigny  became  in  English  Twopenny,  and  the  Dan- 
ish names  of  Asketil,  Thurgod,  and  Guthlac  were  changed 
into  Ashkettle,  Thoroughgood,  and  Goodluch.  There  is  a 
place  in  Norwich  now  called  Goodluck's  Close,  which 
in  ancient  documents  is  correctly  written  Guthlac's  Close, 
and  thus  allows  us  to  trace  the  gradual  change  from  one 
generation  to  another.  In  the  famous  name  of  Wilber- 
force  an  attempt  is  made  to  substitute  a  familiar  word  for 
one  less  generally  known ;  it  was  anciently  Wilburg/os5. 
From  names  the  process  was  extended  to  common  nouns. 
A  Welsh  rarebit  became  a  Welsh  rabbit ;  gorseberries  were 
made  gooseberries,  as  gossamer  is  in  many  districts  called 
goosesummer;  and  Saxon  meregold,  which  contained  the 
same  old  word  mere,  a  marsh  or  water,  which  appears 
in  merman  and  mermaid,  became  marygold.  The  diminu- 
tive kin  being  no  longer  effective  in  connection  with  the 
antiquated  word  culver,  (from  Lat.  columba,)  it  was  mod- 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.  209 

ernized  and  became  culverhey.  Certain  cards  in  our  com- 
mon games  were  of  old  distinguished  from  others  by  the 
long,  splendid  gown  worn  by  king,  queen,  etc.,  according  to 
the  gorgeous  costumes  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  hence  ob- 
tained the  name  of  coat  cards ;  afterwards  the  origin  was 
forgotten,  and  then  these  royal  personages  suggested  another 
idea,  and  they  are  now  called  court  cards.  Old  Saxon 
words  have  especially  suffered  in  this  manner.  What  we 
now  call  shamefaced  had  originally  nothing  to  do  with  a 
face,  but  was  shamefast,  formed  after  the  manner  of  stead- 
fast, and  printed  thus  in  Chaucer,  Froissart,  and  the  first 
authorized  version  of  the  Bible  (1  Tim.  ii.  9).  The  Saxon 
name  of  that  class  of  plants  which  contains  absinth  was 
suthewort,  or  soothing  wort;  first  the  latter  part  became 
obscure,  and  gave  rise  to  a  change  into  soothing  wood;  then 
the  first  part  also  was  forgotten,  and  the  people  now  call  it 
southernwood.  A  similar  now  unknown  word  ord,  mean- 
ing the  first  beginning,  and  preserved  in  the  German  wr, 
gave  rise  to  the  expression  of  ord  and  end,  for  which  we 
substitute  the  more  familiar  sounding  but  unmeaning  odds 
and  ends,  as  topsy-turvy  is  but  the  vulgarized  form  of  top- 
side the  other  way.  Shuttlecock  was  not  so  very  long 
ago  used  correctly  as  shuttle  cork;  but  stirrup  has  long 
since  superseded  the  Anglo-Saxon  stig  rap,  from  stigan,  to 
step  up,  and  rap,  a  rope,  which  in  Saxon  days  served  the 
purpose. 

Sadder,  however,  by  far,  and  yet  clothed  with  additional 
interest,  is  the  fate  of  English  nouns  that  have  suffered  in 
meaning  what  those  we  have  mentioned  had  only  endured 
in  form.  Here  it  is  the  spirit  itself  that  is  maltreated  ;  and 
the  effect  is  all  the  more  melancholy  as  the  principle  of 
compensation  that  affords  comfort  to  many  a  sufferer  in  life 
does  not  seem  to  apply  in  like  manner  to  the  fate  of  words. 
Many  have  fallen,  few  only  have  risen.  Horace  is  either 
unjust  or  not  well  informed  when  he  says  :  — 

14 


210  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

"  Multa  renascentur  quae  jam  cecidere,  cadentque 
Quse  nunc  sunt  in  honore  vocabula,  si  volet  nsus 
Quern  pene  arbitrium  est  et  jus  et  norma  loquendi." — Ars  Poet.  70. 

It  is  strange  that  terms  of  war  should  be  ahiiost  the 
only  examples  of  nouns  that  have  risen  from  an  humble 
to  a  nobler  meaning.     Thus  cavalry  comes  from  the  Latin 
caballusy  which  meant  at  first  nothing  more  than  a  pack- 
horse,  from  which,  however,  was  subsequently  derived  the 
caballarius,  who    finally  rose   to  be  the  French  chevalier. 
Infantry  consisted  once  of  the  infantes,  the  boys  and  ser- 
vants, who  ran,  during  the  Middle  Ages,  on  foot  by  the  side 
of  their  masters  on  horseback;  these  formed  gradually 
separate  corps,  known  as  infanterie,  and  finally  assumed 
the  place  of  their  lords,  the  knights,  in  the  estimation  of 
great  commanders.     The  humble  servant  who  at  first  was 
called  in  Old  German  a  schalk,  and  whose  sole  duty  was 
his  attendance  upon  a  mare,    became    known  as    mares- 
calk  ;  he  rose  to  be  the  superintendent  of  the  royal  stables 
and  obtained  one  of  the  high  charges  at  court.     It  was 
then  he  was  named  marshal,  and  distinction  in  the  field 
procured  for  him  the  chief  command  of  the  forces.     Still, 
we  find,  in  the  French  army  at  least,  by  the  side  of  the 
field  marshal  another  marechal,  who  still  pursues  a  pro- 
fession more  akin  to  the  first  meaning  of  the  word,  for  he 
is  a  simple  farrier.    The  knight  himself  had  a  hard  struggle 
before  he  obtained  the  lofly  position  he  still  occupies  in 
our  language.     The  first  of  the  name  known  in  historic 
documents  was   a  menial   servant,  such  as  the   German 
knecht    remains   to  this    day.      Already  in   Anglo-Saxon 
writings,   however,  the  word    is  used  frequently  for  boy, 
as  in  the  Southern  States  of  America  until  our  day  every 
slave,  of  whatever  age  he  might  be,  was  called  a  boy.  Thus 
we  meet  with  a  "  tynwintra  cniht^'  a  boy  of  ten  years,  and 
in  the  Anglo-Saxon  version  of  the  gospel  the  Apostles  are 
called  "  learning  cnihts.^*     Certain    privileged  boys  were 
subsequently  allowed  to  bear  arms,  and  as  this  honorable 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.  211 

distinction  was  only  sparingly  conferred,  the  word  gradu- 
ally acquired  a  higher  application,  and  finally  settled  down, 
in  the  days  of  chivalry,  into  the  grade  and  style  of  a 
knight. 

Unfortunately,  it  is  but  too  true,  as  Robertson  says, 
that  "  names  and  words  soon  lose  their  meaning.  In 
the  process  of  years  and  centuries  the  latter  fades  off  them 
like  the  sunlight  from  the  hills.  The  hills  are  there  ;  the 
color  is  gone."  Generally  the  process  is  this :  words  are 
unfamiliar  and  dignified  at  first,  they  become  gradually 
more  common  and  with  it  more  indifferent,  until  many 
sink  at  last  into  trivial  and  contemptible  by-words.  Occa- 
sionally the  history  of  such  decay  is  well  authenticated,  as 
in  the  case  of  Bridewell.  St.  Bridget,  or  shorter  St.  Bride, 
was  the  name  bestowed  in  olden  times  upon  a  well  in  Lon- 
don, and  near  it  a  church  of  the  same  name  was  soon 
erected.  Then  a  royal  palace  was  added,  where  King  John 
resided  and  even  Henry  VIII.  in  1529.  After  that,  how- 
ever, the  mansion  was  neglected ;  and  when  quite  decayed, 
it  was  converted  into  a  hospital,  always  bearing  the  origi- 
nal name  of  aS'^.  Bride's  Well.  This  was  converted  in 
1559  into  a  house  of  correction,  by  the  agency  of  Ridley 
the  martyr,  then  Bishop  of  London.  Ultimately  it  became 
a  simple  prison ;  and  Bridewell  is  now  applied,  wherever 
English  is  spoken,  to  denote  a  work-house,  neither  blessed 
saint  nor  holy  well  having  any  thing  more  to  do  with  the 
edifice.  A  somewhat  similar  fate  was  that  of  a  priory  in 
London,  known  as  St.  Mary's  of  Bethlehem,  and  founded 
by  Simon  Fitzmary,  in  1247,  for  the  pious  purpose  of  shel- 
tering and  entertaining  there  the  Bishop  of  Bethlehem 
whenever  he  should  be  in  London.  Perhaps  the  fact  that 
such  a  remarkable  visit  never  actually  occurred  afterwards, 
or  simpler  motives,  led  Henry  VIII.  in  1545  to  grant  it  to 
the  city,  and  thus  brought  about  the  conversion  of  this 
mansion  into  a  house  for  the  insane.  Hence  the  name  of 
Bedlam  now  almost  universally  used  to  designate  a  hospital 


212  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

for  lunatics.  As  we  have  mentioned  above  several  military 
words  that  had  the  rare  good  fate  of  reaching  high  honor, 
we  may  add  here  one  that  has  been  less  fortunate.  The 
noble  family  of  Merode,  famous  in  the  history  of  the  Neth- 
erlands, boasted  of  one  brave  member  who  was  unfortu- 
nately more  successful  in  making  forays  into  the  enemy's 
land  than  in  obtaining  great  victories.  This  uncomfortable 
reputation  gave  rise  to  the  term  of  marauders,  such  as  are 
found  hanging  upon  the  flanks  and  the  rear  of  all  armies. 
Among  common  nouns  there  are  again  many  of  foreign 
origin  the  meaning  of  which  has  suffered  sadly  in  the 
course  of  time.  Giving  precedence  to  the  sex,  we  find 
that  the  belle  dame  of  the  French  was  by  Spenser  al- 
ready written  in  shorter  English  form,  but  used  as  yet  for 
"fair  lady."  Soon  after  Gallic  courtesy  transferred  the 
term  to  grandmothers,  and  it  now  appears  as  beldame,  a 
word  which  afterwards  sank  to  designate  a  hag  or  a  witch. 
We  are  told  a  moral  lesson,  characteristic  of  the  change 
in  manners,  by  the  French  word  prude,  which  originally 
meant  a  prudent,  honest  man,  and  in  that  signification  sur- 
vives in  prud'homme,  the  title  of  umpires  between  me- 
chanics and  tradesmen  in  France.  In  the  other  sex,  how- 
ever, it  has  changed  until  it  is  often  used  to  suggest  fallen 
or  at  least  ill-understood  virtue  rather  than  prudence.  In 
this  connection  we  may  add  respectable,  which  derived  from 
its  Latin  elements  the  idea  of  looking  back  or  looking 
twice  at  an  object,  and  thus  came  to  mean  worthy  of  re- 
spect. Whilst  in  the  United  States  the  older  meaning  has 
been  preserved  in  this  as  in  so  many  English  words,  it  has 
fallen  in  England,  and  refers  now  generally  to  mediocre 
intellect,  or  fallen  gentility,  with  which  we  sympathize. 
Antique  also  conveys  its  lesson ;  used  at  first  exclusively 
for  what  is  old  and  old-fashioned,  it  was  changed  in  form 
and  meaning  into  antics,  suggestive  of  the  fact  that  in  an 
age  where  the  young  rule,  all  that  is  old  is  objectionable 
and  liable  to  ridicule.     The  haughty  superciliousness  with 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.         213 

which  the  Roman  citizen  looked  down  upon  the  poor  emi- 
grant to  foreign  shores,  gave  to  his  colonus  a  dash  of 
contempt,  which  survived  for  a  time  in  the  kindred  feeling 
of  Englishmen  toward  distant  colonies,  and  led  to  the 
contraction  of  the  word  into  clown.  The  feeling  is  said  to 
be  extinct ;  the  word  survives  as  a  sign  of  its  former  preva- 
lence. There  seems  to  be  an  invincible  tendency  for  words 
to  become  harsher  and  more  sweeping  in  their  condem- 
natory meaning,  if  they  but  contain  the  germ  of  such  a 
growth.  Is  this  indicative  of  the  weakness  of  the  human 
heart  to  see  the  mote  in  the  neighbor's  eye  and  to  over- 
look the  beam  in  our  own  ?  Thus  we  find  that  hase  meant 
originally  nothing  more  than  low  or  humble,  and  even  in  the 
old  Bible  version  our  Lord  was  said  to  be  "  equal  to  them 
of  greatest  baseness  ;  "  now  it  is  used  only  of  the  scamp  and 
the  criminal.  In  like  manner  miscreant  was  simply  an  un- 
believer, such  as  Joan  of  Arc  is  represented  by  Shakes- 
peare ;  subsequently  it  became  a  term  of  vilest  reproach. 
This  leads  us  to  the  two  words  pagan  and  villain,  both  of 
which  are  now  terms  of  reproach,  after  having  once  had 
reference  only  to  the  residence  of  certain  classes  of  men. 
For  when  first  the  Gospel  was  proclaimed  abroad  in  Italy, 
every  town  from  the  blue  waters  of  Sicily  to  the  snow- 
capped Alps  in  the  north  seems  to  have  opened  its  gates 
wide  to  the  messengers  of  peace.  But  in  the  villages  and 
waste  tracts  of  land  which  still  were  found  here  and  there, 
the  rustics  went  on  in  the  old  path,  burning  incense  on  their 
heathen  altars,  and  slaying  white  bulls  in  honor  of  Jove,  as 
their  fathers  had  done  before  them.  About  the  end  of  the 
fourth  century,  Theodosius  finally  prohibited  the  Pagan 
ceremonial  altogether ;  from  that  time  no  fire  was  to  be 
lighted  in  honor  of  any  god,  no  wine  to  be  poured  to  the 
genius,  no  incense  to  be  offered  to  the  Penates.  The  sac- 
rifice of  a  victim  to  be  offered  to  the  gods  was  to  be  consi- 
dered as  high  treason,  and  the  decoration  of  a  tree  or  an 
altar  was  punished  with  confiscation.     The  persecuted  wor- 


214  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

shipers  of  the  ancient  gods  retired  from  the  city  and  village 
to  dark  forests  and  deserts,  from  the  open  country  to  re- 
tired valleys.  Henceforth  the  worship  of  Venus  and  Ju- 
piter ceased  to  be  that  of  the  great  and  the  noble,  and  was 
gradually  more  and  more  confined  to  the  inhabitants  of 
rural  districts,  pagi.  Hence  it  acquired  its  name  as  religio 
paganorum,  and  Orosius  explains  the  latter  as  men  "  qui 
ex  locorum  agrestium  compitis  et  pagis  pagani  vocanturT 
From  these  despised  worshipers  of  graven  images  the 
name  has  come  down,  with  undiminished  strength,  even  to 
our  day.  Such  is  the  force  of  a  word,  carrying  with  it  on 
the  stream  of  long  centuries  some  powerful  idea;  and  well 
has  it  been  said  of  old,  ^^Credunt  homines  rationem  suam 
verbis  imperare,  Sed  Jit  etiam  ut  verba  vim  suam  super 
intellectum  retorqueant  et  rejlectant"  It  is  curious  to  notice, 
that,  whilst  paganus  has  sunk  so  low,  its  fellow  compaganus 
has  risen  to  be  our  modern  companion.  In  like  manner, 
however,  fell  the  name  of  the  Roman  master's  slave,  who 
was  sent  to  his  villa  in  the  country,  and  hence  received  the 
name  of  villaneus.  This  was  by  no  means  a  word  of  re- 
proach, and  although  it  may  have  shared  the  degradation 
oi pagan  to  a  certain  degree,  it  was  not,  even  in  Old  English, 
used  to  express  more  than  rusticity  or  coarseness.  At  a 
certain  period  the  word  had  acquired  a  highly  offensive 
moral  meaning ;  but,  by  one  of  those  strange  fluctuations  to 
which  words  are  as  subject  as  the  ideas  which  they  repre- 
sent, it  was  in  Chaucer's  time  used  to  express  nothing  worse 
than  a  serf,  glebce  adscriptus,  and,  in  the  general  acceptation 
of  a  plebeian,  a  low-born  person  with  low  tastes.  Thus 
Chaucer  employs  it  when  he  translates  the  French  vilonnie 
of  Lorris  in  the  Romaunt  de  la  Rose,  v.  2175  :  — 

"  VManie  at  the  beginning, 
I  woU,  sayd  Love,  over  all  thing 
Thou  leave,  if  thou  wolt  ne  be 
False  and  trespace  agenst  me ; 
I  curse  and  blame  generally 
All  hem  that  loven  villanyy 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.         216 

For  villanit  maketh  villeine, 
And  by  bis  deeds  a  chorle  is  seine. 
-These  vUlaines  are  without  pitie, 
Friendship,  love,  and  all  bountie." 

With  a  somewhat  different  meaning  he  uses  it,  in  the 
Prologue  to  his  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  when  he  says :  — 

"  But  firste  I  praie  you  of  your  curtesie 
That  ye  ne  asette  it  not  my  vilanie 
Though  that  I  plainly  speke  in  this  matere, 
Ne  though  I  speek  his  wordes  proprely." 

It  has  been  mentioned  elsewhere  how  pilgrims  to  Rome 
became  idle  roamers,  and  those  who  went  to  the  Holy  Land, 
the  Sainte  Terre,  were  suspected  of  being  saunterers.  In 
the  same  manner  the  French  word  purlieu  meant  in  Eng- 
land what  it  literally  designates,  a  pur  lieu,  i.  e.,  lands  taken 
in  from  the  forest  for  purposes  of  cultivation,  and  hence 
freed  from  the  strict  forest  laws  of  those  days.  Now  it  is 
commonly  used  for  a  disreputable  neighborhood.  Two 
words  of  Eastern  origin  have  suffered  similar  decay.  When 
the  Tudors  and  the  Stuarts  made  their  court  brilliant  with 
gorgeous  displays  and  cunning  masks,  dances  in  Turkish 
costume  were  much  in  vogue  and  known  as  mahomerias, 
from  their  association  with  Mohammed's  followers.  Later, 
the  word  dwindled  down  into  mummery,  which  means  now  a 
low  masquerade,  a  disgusting  disguise.  Our  word  gibberish 
has  a  loftier  origin :  it  comes  from  a  famous  sage  Geber, 
an  Arab,  who  sought  for  the  philosopher's  stone  in  the 
eighth  century,  and  perhaps  used  unintelligible  incantations, 
—  a  custom  which  led  to  the  present  meaning  of  the  word. 

English  words  have  naturally  not  so  oflen  suffered  in  this 
way,  as  there  was  always  more  or  less  in  their  sound  to  re- 
call the  original  meaning.  Still,  examples  are  here  also  not 
wanting  of  words  that  have  fallen  from  a  high  estate.  There 
is  the  Anglo-Saxon  hoer,  who  tilled  the  soil  and  gave  his 
name  to  the  neighbor  of  our  day ;  his  rustic  ways,  how- 
ever, soon  became  known  as  boorish,  and  the  coarse,  ill- 


216  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

mannered  man  is  apt  to  be  called  a  hoor.  Hence,  also, 
through  the  derivative  hoorly,  our  less  obnoxious  burly, 
which  refers  to  external  appearance  only.  The  same  tran- 
sition took  place  in  the  Saxon  word  ceorl,  which  once  was 
a  title  of  honor,  meaning  emphatically  a  free  man,  as  it  still 
does  in  the  German  form,  Kerl,  and  which  is  said  to  survive 
in  our  Charles.  It  is  surmised,  however,  that  these  free 
dwellers  on  their  own  soil  became  soon  obnoxious  to  king 
and  nobles  alike,  and  that  hence  their  name  soon  sank  to  a 
lower  meaning.  The  Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle  says  already 
of  King  Charles,  that  he  was  a  "  Ceorla  Cyng,"  a  churlish 
king,  and  thus  a  churl  has  remained  to  this  day  a  rude  boor. 
The  kindred  viordi  fellow  is  even  now  in  a  state  of  transition  : 
it  still  has  its  original  meaning  of  companionship  when  we 
speak  of /eZ/otf^-sufferers  orye//o«^-citizens,  or  call  a  friend  a 
Rne  fellow;  hut  fellow  alone  is  no  compliment,  and  shows 
the  tendency  of  the  word  to  assume  an  objectionable  ex- 
pression. Knave,  on  the  contrary,  is  always  a  reproach.  In 
its  earlier  days  it  served  to  designate  a  son  or  boy,  and  St. 
Paul  was  thus  called  a  "  knave  of  Jesus  Christ."  This  is  the 
meaning  of  the  German  Knabe  to  this  day.  But  when 
the  sister  language-made  a  slightly  different  word,  Knappe, 
and  bestowed  this  name  upon  a  servant,  —  even  as  serf 
differs  from  servant,  —  our  English  did  not  follow  the  sug- 
gestive example,  but  used  knave  for  the  same  purpose. 
This  meaning  accounts  for  our  calling  the  king's  servant 
in  a  pack  of  cards  the  knave,  as  from  the  German  we  have 
borrowed  our  knapsack,  the  boy's  sack  slung  over  his  shoul- 
der. Hence  the  curious  difference  in  meaning  of  the  same 
word  at  different  periods.  Wickliffe  translates  Exodus  i.  1 6  : 
"  If  it  is  a  knave  child,  sle  ye  him  ;  if  it  is  a  woman,  kepe 
ye,'*  and  the  patient  Grisel  in  the  old  ballad  bore  "  a  knave 
child "  to  the  cruel  Marquis,  who  had  robbed  her  of  her 
daughter.     But  already  in  "  llobin  Hood  "  we  read  ;  — 

♦'  But  now  I  have  slaine  the  master,  he  says, 
Let  mc  goe  strike  the  knave.'^ 


HOW  NOUNS  ARE  ABUSED.  217 

The  transition  is  explained  by  the  historic  fact,  that  the 
name  was,  at  an  early  period,  generally  given  to  the  boys  in 
great  lords'  kitchens  ;  these  behaved  badly  and  were  treated 
badly,  and  thus  the  word  became  gradually  a  term  of  re- 
proach. Shakespeare  shows  it  to  us  in  a  state  of  transition, 
using  it  now  for  a  boy  and  then  for  a  scamp,  whilst  in  "  Ju- 
lius Caesar,"  IV.,  he  even  says :  "  Gentle  knave,  good-night ! " 
It  is  hardly  necessary  to  repeat  that  in  our  day  the  word  is 
one  of  earnest  condemnation. 

Thus  it  was  also  with  one  of  the  numerous  descendants 
with  which  the  root  hred,  to  breed,  has  endowed  our  lan- 
guage. Besides  the  words  hreed,  brood,  hide,  and  brother, 
it  has  bequeathed  to  us  the  unfortunate  brat,  which  origi- 
nally meant  nothing  but  offspring,  and  is  used  as  such  in 
Dean  Trench's  quotation  from  Gascoigne's  "  De  Pro- 
fundis":  — 

"  0  Israel,  0  household  of  the  Lord, 
O  Abraham's  brats,  0  brood  of  blessed  seed, 
O  chosen  sheep  that  loved  the  Lord  indeed." 

Then  it  became  usual  to  designate  an  ill-favored  child  as  a 
brat,  and  now  the  word  is  hardly  admissible  in  polite  con- 
versation. Three  names  of  persons  of  the  fairer  sex  have 
had  a  peculiar  fate.  Gossip,  which  is  at  least  but  rarely 
applied  to  men,  has  the  same  high  origin  as  gospel, 
meaning  sib  or  akin  in  God,  and  was  originally  used  to 
designate  all  persons  who  jointly  entered  into  the  relation 
of  sponsors  for  a  child  about  to  be  baptized.  The  relation- 
ship, it  is  well  known,  is  considered  so  close  as  to  constitute, 
in  the  Catholic  church,  an  insurmountable  obstacle  to  mar- 
riage. Now,  the  word  bears  too  pointed  an  allusion  to  the 
talking,  slandering  propensities  of  certain  persons  to  be 
any  longer  complimentary.  It  is  curious  that  the  corre- 
sponding word  in  French,  commere,  has  lost  its  exalted 
nature  in  precisely  the  same  manner.  The  once  noble  title 
of  housewife,  in  its  full  form  still  unsurpassed  in  its  sim- 
ple and  approving  meaning,  has  degenerated  into  the  vile 


218  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

hiLssy.  As  if  to  make  amends,  we  find  that  the  ancient 
word  cwen,  once  used  in  contrast  with  gom,  as  woman  with 
man,  has,  from  an  expression  of  the  mere  difference  in  sex, 
risen  to  designate  the  woman  by  eminence,  the  queen,  as 
cyning,  of  the  kin,  gave  us  king,  and  as  the  royal  children 
of  Spain  and  France  are  to  this  day  called,  Jils  de  France 
and  infantes  de  Espana. 


CHAPTER  Xn. 

ADJECTIVES. 

•*  Ho  for  an  epithet !  "  — Ancient  Author. 

"  The  English  is  plenteousne  enoughe  to  expresse  our 
myndes  in  any  thing  whereof  one  man  hath  nede  to  speke 
with  another,"  says  Sir  Thomas  More,  who  evidently  dealt 
much  in  matter  of  fact,  or  despised  epithets  as  much  as 
modern  authors  love  them  by  the  side  of  their  nouns.  For 
the  English  is  not  particularly  rich  in  adjectives,  and  re- 
sembles, although  it  does  not  go  quite  as  far  as,  the  language 
of  a  tribe  of  North  American  Indians,  the  Mohegans,  who 
have  no  adjectives  whatever,  if  we  may  rely  on  the  judg- 
ment of  Dr.  Jonathan  Edwards.  It  is  well  known  how  this 
statement  delighted  our  democratic  philologist.  Home  Tooke, 
who  found  in  it  a  strong  proof  of  his  doctrine,  that  adjec- 
tives were  never  original  words.  They  are,  at  all  events, 
not  a  separate  class  of  words,  not  names  of  persons  or 
things  possessing  an  independent  existence.  The  mental 
process  to  which  they  owe  their  origin  is  the  naming  of 
qualities,  observed  in  tangible  objects  but  separated  from 
them,  so  that  they  may  be  applied  to  others  also.  One  con- 
sequence of  this  want  of  substantiality  is,  that  they  change 
their  meaning  in  the  process  of  passing  from  one  language 
to  another  more  than  nouns  and  verbs.  Nouns  are  always 
more  or  less  intimately  connected  with  the  object  they  des- 
ignate, and  may  easily  be  traced  back  to  it,  even  after  they 
have  been  used  figuratively  for  generations.  Adjectives,  on 
the  other  hand,  express  only  qualities,  and  qualities  assume 


220  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

very  drfferent  aspects  as  they  are  applied  to  different  objects. 
A  brave  homme  is  by  no  means  a  hrave  man  with  us, 
and  a  virtuoso  need  not  at  all  be  a  virtuous  man  ac- 
cording to  our  standard  of  morality.  The  national  respect 
paid  to  wealth  in  England  has  long  since  led  foreigners  to 
notice  the  tendency  to  describe  every  thing  that  is  praised 
as  a  rich  thing,  —  rich  colors,  a  rich  saying,  or  a  rich  joke, 
even,  —  and  to  condemn  what  is  inferior  as  a  poor  thing, 
—  a  poor  book  and  a  poor  statue.  Changes  of  meaning 
are  shown  most  in  those  adjectives  we  have  received  from 
the  French.  By  dint  of  mispronouncing  and  misspelling, 
they  have  often  lost  both  form  and  meaning.  Thus  ecrase 
is  now  applied  to  the  mind  only  as  crazy;  gentil,  besides  the 
vulgarized  genteel,  the  pleasing  gentle,  and  the  rarer  gentile, 
has  produced  the  offensive  jaunty  ;  puisne,  still  preserved 
in  our  judges,  is  for  all  other  persons  simply  puny  ;  and 
deshabille  has,  not  without  justice,  become  shabby.  Aigre 
is  no  longer  sharp,  as  it  must  once  have  been,  to  judge 
from  the  line  in  Chapman's  "  Iliad : "  "  Now  on  the  eager 
razor's  edge  for  life  or  death  we  stand."  It  is  only  in  vine- 
gar that  it  has  preserved  its  older  meaning  of  acrid.  In 
other  words  we  find  a  division  of  meaning,  as  in  the  de- 
scendants of  the  Latin  captivus,  which  has  given  us  first 
captive,  and  then,  from  the  contempt  with  which  early  Sax- 
ons looked  upon  the  miserable  prisoner,  the  meaner  caitiff. 
In  Italian  the  same  word,  cattivo,  now  means  all  that  is  bad ; 
in  French,  chetif  whatever  is  feeble  and  fragile.  Some  of 
these  changes,  which  are  unfortunately  but  seldom  to  be 
traced  step  by  step,  are  so  peculiar  as  to  deserve  greater 
attention  than  they  have  obtained  heretofore.  How  came 
gros  to  be  only  gross,  petit  to  be  petty,  and  joli  to  degenerate 
into  jolly  ?  The  transition  has  been  even  more  injurious 
to  a  number  of  German  adjectives,  —  a  fatality  which  the 
learned  Dean  Trench  ascribes  to  the  depression  of  the 
Anglo-Saxons  after  their  sad  defeat  by  the  Normans.  If 
this  can  be  proved,  —  and  the  assertion  is  well  supported, 


ADJECTIVES.  221 

—  their  moral  deterioration  has  left  a  permanent  and  most 
interesting  record  in  our  language.  Some  changes  are  in- 
explicable, as  those  of  German  emsig  (busy),  klein  (little), 
glatt  (smooth),  and  dumm  (stupid),  into  empty,  clean,  glad, 
and  dumb.  Others  show  a  clear  demoralization,  as  when 
taper,  (valiant)  sinks  into  dapper,  rasch  (active)  into  rash, 
and  prdchtig  (splendid)  into  pretty.  Among  these  Ger- 
man adjectives,  bleich  (pale)  also  became  hleah,  although 
in  Fox's  "  Book  of  Martyrs  "  the  latter  has  still  the  original 
meaning :  "  When  she  came  out,  she  looked  as  pale  and 
as  bleak  as  one  that  were  laid  out  dead." 

The  number  of  adjectives  derived  from  foreign  languages 
is  quite  large,  that  of  the  natives  comparatively  small.  In 
return,  the  English  exercises,  of  all  living  languages,  the 
greatest  freedom  in  using  any  word,  noun  or  adverb,  as  an 
adjective  by  merely  placing  it  alongside  of  another  noun. 
The  result,  with  regard  to  the  former  part  of  speech  is,  that 
in  our  day,  of  two  nouns  placed  side  by  side,  one,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  qualifies  or  characterizes  the  other,  and 
thus  performs  the  part  of  an  adjective.  We  are  all  familiar 
with  a  gold  watch,  a  bottle  nose,  a  University  man,  an  evening 
dress,  or  a  morning  draught.  Some  authors  go  farther,  from 
Campbell's  "  Like  angel  visits  few  and  far  between,"  to  Leigh 
Hunt's  "With  her  in-and-out  deliciousness,"  or  Falstaff's 
advice  to  Prince  Hal,  "  Go  hang  yourself  in  your  own  heir- 
apparent  garters.^* 

Original  adjectives  can,  therefore,  scarcely  be  said  to  exist 
in  English.  Even  about  the  simplest  of  those  now  in  use 
there  hangs  a  doubt ;  our  good  has  been  commonly  traced  to 
the  same  root  as  God,  and  ill  is  but  a  contracted  form  of  evil. 
Others,  of  course,  cannot  be  so  distinctly  traced  back  to  their 
first  origin,  and  pass,  therefore,  as  original. 

The  number  of  derivatives  is  large,  and  here,  as  among 
nouns,  we  find  both  Saxon  and  Norman  syllables  used  for 
the  purpose,  although  many  of  them  have  of  late  become 
obsolete.      Many  Anglo-Saxon  and  Old  English  termina- 


OT  TBOI 

UiriVBRSITT] 


222  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

tions,  however,  are  still  clearly  known  as  such,  and  among 

them  especially  the  ancient  -en.     Its  use  must  have  been 

very  common,  for  among  older  writers  we  meet  hundreds 

of  words  formed  by  its  aid,  which  are  now  no  longer  in  use. 

Chaucer  speaks  of  rosen  chaplet  and  azurn  sheen ;  Spenser 

has,  in  "  Mother  Hubberd's  Tale,"  — 

"  Or  els  by  wrestling  to  wex  strong  and  heedful!, 
Or  his  stifFe  armes  to  stretch  with  eughen  bowe; " 

and  in  his  "  Fairy  Queen,"  (V.  5,  30,)  — 

"  Let  him  lodge  hard  and  lie  in  strawen  bed, 
That  may  pull  downe  the  courage  of  his  pride." 

Sir  Thomas  More  makes  good  use  of  the  syllable  when 
he  says  :  "  In  their  time  they  had  treen  chalices  and  golden 
prestes,  and  now  we  have  golden  chalices  and  treen  prestes." 
This  word  treen  seems  to  have  been  a  favorite  with  our 
fathers,  for  we  find,  that,  not  to  speak  of  Wickliffe,  who  has 
treen  by  the  side  of  stonen,  hairen,  hrichen,  and  hornen,  Milton 
speaks  in  "  Comus  "  of  treen  platters,  and  Jeremy  Taylor 
recommends  a  treen  cup.  With  true  poetic  instinct  Wood- 
worth  still  sings  of  "  the  old  oaken  bucket "  and  the  noble 
poem,  so  full  of  sweet  thoughts  of  childhood  passed  in  the 
country,  will  no  doubt  preserve  the  old  form  as  long  as 
Englishmen  love  English  songs. 

Now  we  still  use  brazen  and  flaxen,  woolen  and  wooden^ 
golden,  and  sometimes  leaden  and  siVcen ;  but  there  is  a 
manifest  tendency  in  the  language  to  dispense  with  this 
class  of  adjectives,  and  to  substitute  for  them  the  simple 
form  of  the  noun.  Brazen  is  giving  way  to  brass  orna- 
ments, oaken  to  oak  floor,  and  oaten  to  oatmeal.  Golden 
and  earthen  are  still  familiar  to  us,  because  they  are  in  our 
Bibles ;  but  on  all  other  occasions  the  nouns  are  employed, 
and  we  speak  of  a  gold  pin  and  of  earth-vjovks.  Woolen  holds 
likewise  its  own,  but  its  meaning  is  more  limited  than  be- 
fore the  time  when  the  town  of  Worstead,  in  the  parish  of 
Norfolk,  first  established  extensive  manufactories  of  worsted. 
The   corresponding  forms  of  Latin  words  in  English  are 


ADJECTIVES.  223 

such  as  ligneous  and  marine,  of  Greek,  cedrine  and  petrine. 
The  adjective  derived  from  austere  has  become  somewhat 
obscured,  being  shortened  into  stern  ;  in  the  ancient  ballad 
of  "  Northumberland  Betrayed,"  by  Douglas,  we  find  still:  — 

"  But  who  is  yond  thou  lady  faire 
That  looketh  with  sic  an  austeren  face?  " 

The  termination  -y,  simple  as  it  appears  at  first  sight,  is 
of  great  antiquity  and  original  power.  It  is  the  last  faint 
echo  of  a  syllable  corresponding  to  the  Greek  -lko<s,  from 
ayo),  and  to  the  Latin  -icus,  from  ago.  Only  in  one  single 
instance  has  the  fuller  form  been  brought  down  directly 
from  the  Greek ;  this  is  in  the  word  cfipevirtKos,  which  gave 
to  the  Italians  their  farnetico,  and  to  us  the  modern  f7'antic. 
Its  Anglo-Saxon  form  had  already  softened  into  -ig ;  the 
final  g  was  then,  most  probably,  pronounced  like  a  gentle 
aspirate,  as  is  the  case  now  in  all  such  words  in  German, 
and,  finally,  the  g  becoming  silent,  the  English  wrote  it  y, 
the  Scotch  ie.  Thus  we  have  made  words  like  bloody,  any, 
holy,  mighty,  speedy,  sorry  (from  sore),  ready,  and  others, 
but  not  our  numerals  with  the  same  termination  ;  for  these 
the  final  syllable  is  ty,  and  has  a  very  different  origin  and 
meaning.  When  the  original  word  terminates  already  in  a 
vowel,  we  insert,  as  an  orthographical  precaution,  an  addi- 
tional e  between  it  and  the  final  y  ;  this  is  the  origin  of  our 
clayey  and  skyey. 

The  rarer  -ish,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  to  be  of  entirely 
modern  origin,  for  the  Greek  did  not  know  it  at  all,  and 
the  Latin  only  in  verbs,  as  viresco  and  pallesco,  from  which 
are  descended  the  many  Norman  verbs  of  the  kind,  like 
garnish  and  furnish.  It  appears  first  in  Italian  adjectives 
as  -esco,  and  in  French  as  -esque,  which  we  have  preserved  in 
picturesque  and  statuesque  (?),  arabesque  and  moresque,  bur- 
lesque and  grotesque.  The  leading  idea  seems  to  be  that  of 
likeness,  and,  as  what  is  only  like  another  object  is  not  the 
same  as  the  original,  there  followed  soon  the  idea  of  mere 
resemblance,  and  hence  of  diminution.     It  differs  from  like 


224  V  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

in  this,  that  it  refers  only  to  the  outside  quality,  not  to  the 
essential  character.  Thus  we  speak  of  Jewish  and  knavish, 
of  bluish  and  grayish  ;  and  occasionally  in  connection  with  a 
French  root,  as  m  feverish  and  foolish.  The  modem  Scotch, 
Welsh,  and  French  are  but  contracted  forms  of  the  original 
Scottish^  Walish,  and  Frankish.  We  express  the  meaning 
of  ish  in  Latin  words  by  forms  like  ruhescent,  and  in  Greek 
by  oidal,  as  in  spheroidal. 

Of  greater  importance  at  present,  and  of  true  Saxon 
origin,  is  the  frequent  termination  -ly,  the  remnant  of  the 
original  lie.  There  was  yet  not  only  in  Anglo-Saxon,  but 
even  in  Old  English,  a  noun  lice,  which  meant,  rather 
technically,  the  body,  and  hence  often  served  to  designate 
the  corpse.  Its  German  representative,  Leiche,  still  in 
use,  has  that  meaning  exclusively,  and  retains  the  pronun- 
ciation of  our  Saxon  fathers ;  for  the  town  of  Leigh,  near 
Wigan,  the  name  of  which  is  derived  from  this  root,  is 
pronounced  by  simple  and  gentle  alike  with  the  true  gut- 
tural sound  of  the  German  ch.  Numerous  old  terms  and 
local  names  are  derived  from  the  same  word,  and  retain, 
more  or  less  distinctly,  the  primary  meaning.  Halliwell 
gives  us  lichwort  as  herb  pellitory,  and  lychehells  as  hand- 
bells rung  for  the  dead.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the 
superstitious  awe  inspired  by  the  uncouth  calls  of  the  lich- 
owl,  which  either  accompanies  the  laying-out  of  a  dead  per- 
son or  foretells  the  near  approach  of  death.  The  town  of 
Lichfield,  the  birthplace  of  Dr.  Johnson,  is  said  by  Bailey 
to  derive  its  name  of  a  field  of  carcasses  from  the  fact  that 
"  a  great  many  suffered  martyrdom  there  in  the  time  of 
Diocletian."  In  Scotland  the  same  term  lichfield  is  fre- 
quently used  for  churchyard  as  a  graveyard ;  and  in  some 
parts  of  England  the  gate  appropriated  specially  for  the 
admission  of  dead  bodies  before  interment  is  to  this  day 
called  lich-gate,  though  often  misspelt  as  leech-gate.  The 
path  leading  to  this  entrance  is  in  Exmoor  and  the  west  of 
England  called  the  leech-way,  and  in  Cheshire  the  lich-road. 


ADJECTIVES.  225 

Chaucer  introduces,  in  the  "  Knight's  Tale,"  3959,  a  similar 

word  when  he  says, — 

"  Ne  how  the  Kchewache  was  yhold, 
All  thilke  night," 

which  sitting  up  with  the  dead  body  is  now  generally  a 
likerwahe^  and,  not  unfrequently,  especially  in  the  North  of 
England,  a  late-wake. 

From  this  ancient  word  we  derive  in  modem  English  a 
double  form  for  adjectives :  the  full  form  like,  the  German 
gleich,  where  we  wish  to  convey  the  idea  of  full  resem- 
blance in  character  and  all  essentials,  in  the  sense,  in  fact, 
in  which  Shakespeare  says,  in  "  Julius  Caesar,"  — 

"  That  every  like  is  not  the  same,  0  Caesar, 
The  heart  of  Brutus  yearns  to  think  upon." 

The  Scotch  proverb,  "  Like  's  an  ill  mark,"  expresses  the 
same,  namely,  that  to  be  like  a  thing  is  often  very  far  from 
being  that  thing.  In  this  sense  we  form  adjectives  like  life- 
like,  church-like,  and  court-like.  When  we  wish,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  express  a  mere  general  resemblance,  not  in  essen- 
tial qualities  but  in  form  or  in  figure,  we  employ  the  short- 
ened form  -ly,  and  thus  make  lively,  curly,  and  manly.  In 
many  cases  double  forms  exist,  where  the  full  word  gives 
the  full  meaning,  the  shortened  word  the  curtailed  mean- 
ing. The  difference  is  easily  perceived  between  godlike  and 
godly,  ghost-like  and  ghostly,  death-like  and  deathly,  or  heaven- 
like and  heavenly.  Clearly,  durably,  valiantly,  voraciously, 
and  passively  are  examples  of  French  words  which  have 
assumed  the  Saxon  ending ;  they  never  take  like  with  its 
full  Saxon  meaning.  The  original  word  is  obscured  and 
almost  concealed  in  forms  \\k.Q  frolic,  which  originally  meant 
nothing  more  than  freely,  as  it  came  from  freo,  our  free, 
and  silly,  which  is  derived  from  the  word  seld,  strange  or 
rare,  still  retained  in  our  seldom. 

The  termination  -some  is  even  now  in  the  act  of  becoming 
obsolete,  and  its  primary  meaning   has  so  entirely  faded 
away  from  the  memory  of  men  that  it  is  extremely  difficult 
15 


226  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

to  trace  it  with  certainty  to  its  true  origin.  The  most  prob- 
able derivation  is  from  a  root  which  has  also  given  us  our 
sum^  a  presumption  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  we  use  it 
under  the  same  form  of  some  already  when  we  wish  to  de- 
note an  indefinite  sum  or  quantity.  Thus  we  say,  "  I  went 
some  twenty  miles,"  or,  "  He  gave  him  some  hundred  pounds." 
Here,  as  in  en,  the  former  frequency  and  the  gradual  disap- 
pearance of  the  termination  may  be  distinctly  traced  from 
generation  to  generation.  Wickliffe  has  lovesum  and  hate- 
sum,  lustsum  and  wealsum,  heavy  sum  and  delightsum.  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher  are  fond  of  the  still  surviving  toothsome, 
Shakespeare  has  laborsome,  and  Milton  unlightsome.  Even 
in  so  rece'nt  a  writer  as  Hume  we  find  playsome,  gleesome, 
and  joysome,  which  are  rapidly  disappearing  from  the  pages 
of  modern  authors.  We  may  rest  contented  with  having 
lost  the  derivative  of  ugly,  which  we  find  in  Surrey's  JEneid, 
(H.  p.  29,)  - 

*'  In  ever}'  place  the  ugsome  S3'htes  I  saw," 

but  the  loss  of  longsome,  familiar  to  German  scholars  as 

langsam  (slow)  in  that  language,  is  much  to  be  regretted. 

The  ballad  of  "  Gilderoy  "  has,  — 

"  Wi'  mickle  joy  we  spent  our  prime 
Till  M'e  were  baith  sixteen, 
And  aft  we  pest  the  langsome  time 
Among  the  leaves  sae  green." 

With  the  exception  of  a  few  like  fulsome  (from  foulsome), 
wearisome,  and  lonesome,  there  seems  to  be  a  tendency  to 
retain  this  beautiful  and  expressive  form  only  for  words  con- 
veying pleasing  impressions,  such  as  gleesome,  inirthsome, 
handsome,  and  toothsome.  The  Norman  hybrids  are  of  a 
different  nature :  there  we  have  venturesome,  quarrelsome, 
and  cumbersome.  Irksome  comes  from  the  Saxon  form 
wyrc,  our  work,  and  therefore  means  literally  "full  of 
work."  Buxom  was  formerly  houghsom,  like  a  bough  to 
be  bent,  as  in  the  German  hiegsam,  of  which  Dean  Trench 
gives  us  the  interesting  illustration  in  an  ancient  profession 
of  submission :  '*  I  submit  myself  unto  this  holy  church  of 


ADJECTIVES.  227 

Christ  to  be  ever  huxom  and  obedient  to  the  ordinances  of 
it"  Why  it  should  nowadays  be  almost  exclusively  ap- 
plied to  widows  is  difficult  of  explanation ;  it  may  be  that 
an  indistinct  association  between  a  bough  and  a  green  old 
age  may  have  led  to  the  connection. 

One  of  the  most  fertile  words  of  this  kind  is  -less,  from 
the  Saxon  lease,  to  lose,  which  gives  us  faiherless  and 
motherless,  careless,  and  reckless,  literally  one  who  has  lost 
his  reckoning.  It  adapts  itself  with  greater  readiness  than 
others  to  French  roots,  as  in  artless,  merciless,  graceless,  joy- 
less, and  painless.  Its  sense  is  so  manifest  and  so  suggest- 
ive that  new  adjectives  of  this  class  are  continually  made 
by  modern  authors ;  some  obtain  admission  into  the  body 
of  the  language,  others  are  understood  but  not  adopted. 
Byron  ventured  far  in  the  lines  :  — 

"  The  world  was  void, 
The  population  and  the  powerful  was  a  lamp, 
Seasonless,  herbless,  treeless,  manless,  lifeless, 
A  lump  of  death,  a  chaos  of  hard  clay." 

It  is  not  much  to  the  credit  of  the  people,  if  we  may 
judge  them  by  their  language,  that  the  idea  of  loss  should 
have  produced  such  numbers  of  derivatives,  whilst  the 
opposite  idea  of  holding  fast  is  met  with  but  rarely.  We 
have  but  a  few,  like  steadfast,  and  one  of  the  most  express- 
ive, skamefast,  as  it  is  printed  in  the  Bible  of  1611,  (1 
Tim.  ii.  9.)  meaning  protected  by  shame,  is  now  sadly 
changed  by  ignorance  into  shamefaced. 

Among  these  derivative  adjectives  we  must  not  forget 
those  that  have  been  made  negative  either  by  the  Saxon 
un,  or  the  Norman  French  in.  The  former  prevailed  for  a 
time  even  after  the  Conquest ;  then  followed,  apparently,  a 
period  of  confiision,  during  which  un  and  in  were  used 
without  distinction,  until,  finally,  the  all-powerful  tendency 
to  uniformity  made  in  the  prevailing  form.  Thus  we  use 
now  incapable  exclusively  for  the  once  universal  uncapable. 
Shakespeare  has  unpossiUe  ("  Richard  n.,**  Act  11^  so.  2), 
and  "  like  a  thing  unfirmr  ("  Julius  Caesar  ").   Mlton 


228  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

repeatedly  unactive,  and,  with  strange  forgetfulness,  says,  in 
"  Paradise  Lost,"  X.,  "  Uninmortal  made  all  kinds."  It  is 
somewhat  strange  that  the  disposition  to  adopt  the  French 
in  for  all  cases,  should  have  affected  Saxon  words  more 
than  French  ;  for  we  still  say,  uncertain,  unceasing,  and  un- 
determined, and  generally  use,  even  now,  un  with  French 
adjectives.  This  is  all  the  more  remarkable  as  the  language 
shows  generally  a  very  decided  tendency  to  admit  such  hy- 
brids only  as  exceptions,  and,  as  a  rule,  to  combine  words 
of  the  same  race  only,  —  Latin  with  Latin,  and  Saxon  with 
Saxon.  Tlie  state  of  transition  in  which  the  negative  pre- 
fix now  is  may  be  seen  from  the  varied  forms  in  which  it 
appears  in  modern  English.  We  have  the  pure  Saxon  ele- 
ments in  unlike,  a  German  and  a  Norman  word  combined  in 
uncertain,  a  Latin  form  in  insecure,  and  finally  the  soflened, 
probably  French,  ignoble. 

Although  we  no  longer  decline  our  adjectives,  as  the 
Anglo-Saxons  did,  we  still  inflect  them  for  the  purpose  of 
forming  what  grammarians  not  very  appropriately  call  their 
comparative  degrees.  As  adjectives  express  but  a  quality 
belonging  to  some  person  or  object,  the  extent  of  being 
thus  qualified  will  necessarily  differ  much  in  various  cases. 
Two  persons  may  be  endowed  with  the  same  quality,  but 
one  will  possess  it  in  a  higher  degree  than  the  other ;  and 
all  languages  have  made  efforts  to  express  this  difference  in 
meaning  by  a  change  in  the  form  of  the  adjective  itself, 
rather  than  by  additional  words.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact, 
not  yet  satisfactorily  explained,  that  the  oldest  of  well- 
known  languages,  the  Sanscrit,  the  Zend,  the  Greek,  and 
the  Latin,  all  possess  double  forms  for  what  we  now  call 
the  comparative  and  superlative. 

The  Sanscrit  makes  the  comp.  in  taraX  or  iyas,  the  super!,  in  tama  or  ishta. 
"    Zend  "  "  iara  "  is,        "        "  tama  "  ithla. 

"     Greek  "  "  repo?  "  wv,         "  "  Taro?  "  «rTO«. 

«    Latin  "  "  ier     »  tw,       "        "  mti$    "  iiui., 

1  This  tnra  is  not  a  pronominal  ending,  like  so  many  others,  but  an 
'imcient  root,  which  means  to  go  beyond,  and  reappears  in  the  Latin  iratu 


ADJECTIVES.  229 

Thus  we  find  d/xetVwv  and  /xcl^iov,  apia-ro^  and  /Aeyto-ros.  The 
Latin,  likewise,  has  alter,  uter,  neuter,  (magister,)  and,  for  the 
ancient  tus,  the  more  recent  form  lor,  as  in  major  and  Jlr- 
mior  ;  in  the  superlative,  optimus  and  maximus  by  the  side 
of  venustus,  vetustus,  and  robustus.  The  example  set  by  these 
venerable  languages  has  been  faithfully  followed  by  more 
modern  idioms,  and  we  find  in  all  kindred  languages  a 
similar  duality  of  forms.  The  English  shares,  of  course, 
this  peculiarity,  and  we  have,  to  this  day,  a  comparative  in 
r  or  in  s,  and  a  superlative  in  m  or  in  st.  The  early  history 
of  these  forms  is  not  quite  as  clear  as  would  be  desirable 
for  the  honor  of  etymologists  ;  we  will  state  here  only  the 
most  plausible,  and,  at  the  same  time,  best  authenticated 
theory. 

It  is  probable  that  the  forms  of  our  degrees  have  passed 
through  an  extremely  simple  and  regular  process.  Taking 
it  for  granted  that  the  letter  r  is  the  principal  sign  of  the 
comparative,  common  to  all  Indo-European  languages,  as 
is  now  well  established,  we  find  the  ancient  Saxon  word  a, 
meaning  time,  thus  treated.  It  is  the  same  word  we  meet 
already  in  Greek  as  dct  or  dtwi/,  in  Latin  as  cevum,  and  in 
German  as  ewig.  Changed  into  a  higher  degree,  it  appears 
in  Anglo-Saxon  as  cer  or  ar,  which  has  given  us  our  ere, 
more  in  time,  as  it  were,  and  hence  meaning  before,  or, 
when  used  as  a  derivative,  erely,  our  modern  early.  Thus 
it  is  still  used  by  Shakespeare  :  — 

"  Ere  a  determinate  resolution  he  did  require  a  respite." 

Henry  VI 11.  II.  4. 

The  same  simple  and  primitive  word  was  next  formed  into 
a  superlative  by  the  letters  st,  which  are  in  like  manner 
found  to  be  common  to  all  the  idioms  which  belong  to  the 
same  family  as  our  English.  Hence  arose  the  Anglo-Saxon 
form  aerest,  which  has,  in  its  turn,  given  us  our  erst,  first  in 

and  the  French  ires.  When  the  latter,  therefore,  places  tres  before  an  adjec- 
tive in  order  to  express  a  high  or  transcendent  degree,  it  does  no  more  than 
English  does  by  adding  er  to  the  end  of  an  adjective. 


230  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

time.  The  transition  from  time  to  other  qualities  was  easy 
enough  ;  what  was  at  first  only  asserted  with  regard  to  this 
one  relation,  was  soon  used  to  express  a  similar  superiority 
in  other  respects  also,  until  the  two  forms  ere  and  ersi  be- 
came the  general  means  of  forming  what  we  now  call  the 
degrees.  It  is  in  this  manner  and  for  these  reasons  that 
we,  in  common  with  all  branches  of  the  German  family, 
make  the  comparative  of  adjectives  by  adding  er,  and  the 
superlative  by  adding  est.  Irregular  forms,  however,  occur 
here  as  in  all  languages.  It  is  well  known  how  both 
Greek  and  Latin  abounded  with  such  varieties  of  forms. 
In  the  former,  — 

if^aJioi  had  d/xccVwi/  and  api<rro«,  koko^  had  KOKimv  and  Koxiorrof, 
/SeATiwi/  and  PeKriaroi,  x'^pw"  and  x«i><rros, 

Kpeiaatov  and  KpaTt<rTos,  ^<r<rw»'  and  jjicioros, 

Auwv  and  Acj)<rTOs. 

In  the  latter,  bonus  made  melior  and  optimus  ;  mcdus,  pejor 
and  pessimus. 

Some  of  the  so-called  irregular  forms  in  English  are, 
however,  only  in  appearance  such,  having  merely  retained 
the  Anglo-Saxon  umlaut,  or  change  of  radical  vowel,  which 
is  to  this  day  in  German  faithfully  preserved.  Hence  we 
make  of  old  the  forms  older  and  oldest,  by  the  side  of 
elder  and  eldest.  The  former  we  use  to  designate  old  age 
absolutely,  and  thus  speak  of  that  oft-quoted  personage,  the 
"  oldest  inhabitant ; "  the  latter  expresses  merely  relative 
superiority  of  age,  as  in  the  "  Elder  Pliny,"  or  the  "  Elders  " 
of  the  Church.  It  is  the  descendant  of  the  ancient  form 
of  the  adjective,  which  was  eld,  as  Shakespeare  still  has  it 
when  he  says,  — 

"  And  well  you  know 
The  superstitious  idle-headed  eld 
Received  and  did  deliver  to  our  ag 
This  tale  of  Heme,  the  hunter,  for  a  truth." 

Merry  Wives,  IV.  4. 

In  like  manner  we  now  make  of  long  only  longer  and  /on- 
gest,h\ii  Chaucer  has  lenger  for  the  former, and  the  original 


ADJECTIVES.  231 

vowel  survives  in  our  length  and  in  the  word  Lent,  so  called 
because  at  that  season  the  days  begin  once  more  to  lengthen, 
so  that  formerly  Lent  meant  not  only  the  religious  season, 
but  Spring  simply,  as  in  a  poem  of  the  thirteenth  century:  — 

*'  Lenten  ys  come  with  love  to  toune, 
With  blosmen  and  with  briddes  [birds]  roune, 
That  al  thys  blysse  brj^ngeth." 

The  large  majority  of  so-called  irregularities  arise  from 
the  custom,  also  common  to  all  known  languages,  of  allow- 
ing one  or  the  other  form  of  these  degrees  to  become  obso- 
lete, and  of  substituting  another  word  of  similar  meaning 
for  it,  which  produces  the  appearance  as  if  two  entirely 
different  adjectives  were  closely  connected  with  each  other. 
Thus  the  Latin  language  dropped  junis,  which  is  now 
only  known  in  the  noun  juvenis,  but  retained  junior  ;  its 
positive  se7ies  survives  only  as  senex,  but  senior  is  still 
in  use.  Thus  it  is  with  our  more  and  most,  which  are 
commonly  quoted  as  comparative  and  superlative  of  much, 
without  having  any  etymological  relation  with  that  word. 
It  is  not  a  little  remarkable  that  most  seems  to  be  of  ancient 
descent,  for  it  is  evidently  one  and  the  same  word  with  /xet- 
<TTo<i,  used  instead  of  /xeyio-ros,  with  the  magsimus  of  Latin, 
and  the  meist  of  the  German.  In  our  own  language  we 
trace  it  back  to  an  obsolete  Anglo-Saxon  ma  or  moe,  related 
to  the  equally  old  verb  mawan,  to  mow.  What  was  mown 
made  a  little  heap,  and  mown  thus  naturally  used  to  desig- 
nate a  small  quantity,  in  which  sense  we  still  employ  it 
when  we  speak  of  hay-mow  or  harley-mow,  as  mow-hurnt  hay 
is  hay  which  has  been  burnt  in  the  stack.  For  this  deriva- 
tion speaks  also  the  use  of  maer  and  maest  in  Scotland  and 
some  of  the  Northern  counties ;  to  which  may  be  added 
the  odd  use  made  of  both  forms  in  Scotland,  where  they 
speak  of  hrothermaist,  quite  brotherly,  and  use  the  equally 
curious  expressions  fartherwaur  and  fatherhetter.  A  diminu- 
tive form  of  this  word  mae  also  survives  from  oldest  times 
*in  the  Anglo-Saxon  micel,  and  the  Scotch  mickle  or  muchle. 


282  STUDIES  IN  KNQLISH. 

still  Hwrvivin^  in  the  fjiinily  miinu  of  Mitchelly  literally  the 
Great.  I  hincc  we  say  al.m),  "  Many  a  little  makes  a  mickle  ; " 
and  in  the  "  Comedy  of  Errors,"  III.  1,  we  read, — 

•'The  one  no'crj^ot  \\w  ticdif,  \\w  ollmr  mickh  hiamo." 
Moe  itHelf  in  quaintly  enough  used  us  a  comparative  in  older 
authors.     Caxton  says,  "  Many  mo  unto  the  nombro  of  ten 
thousand  and  moo  (were  slayne)."     The  sanje  form  occurs 
continually  in  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  c.  </. :  — 

"  All  tlumu  uiul  iiiuiiy  cvIIh  mov.  huiiiit  Iru."  —Fairy  C^ueen,  I.  4,  85. 
Shakespeare  also  has  it  as  in  "Julius  Cassar  : "  "  No,  sir,  there 
are  moe  with  him;"  and  in  "Much  Ado  about  Nothing," 

III.  8:  — 

"  Sing  no  more  dittiei,  sing  no  moe 
Or  dumps  so  dull  and  heavy, 
The  fVauda  of  men  were  ever  so 
Since  summer  first  was  leavy,** 

where  the  verse  evidently  requires  it  to  rhyme  with  so. 

The  at^ective  had  also  has  nothing  more  than  a  similar- 
ity of  meaning  in  common  witli  tlie  C()m])arative  degrees 
worse  and  worst.  These  are,  on  the  contrary,  derived  from 
the  word  woe^  now  used  as  a  noun  only,  but  formerly  treated 
as  an  acyective  with  its  Old  lOnjjjIish  derivatives  wt/rse  and 
wyrstj  and  its  Scotch  and  North  of  iMigland  forms  t/viurand 
war.  The  substitution  of  thc^se  words  for  the  regular  fxid- 
der  was  apparently  not  completed  until  a  con»paratively 
recent  date,  for  Chaucer  still  says, — 

"  to  thiH  bmUkv  untie,''—  10638, 

and  Shakespeare  was  so  little  familiar  with  the  nature  of 
worse  that  he  continually  uses  worsery  as  in  "  Richard  III.,** 
where  he  says, — 

"  I  wish  your  grandam  had  a  worter  march," 
and  worsest.  was  nuich  affected  by  all  the  writers  of  the  fif- 
teenth and  sixteenth  centuries,  not  excluding  Shakespeare. 
Even  Dry  den  says  yet,  "  worser  far  than  arms." 

In  like  manner  we  have  lost  the  once  popular  adjective 
betf  from  which,  with  a  doubled  linul  consonant,  we  derive 


ADJECTIVES.  288 

our  better^  and  heH  by  contracting  the  old  form  hetest.  The 
substitution  of  f/ood,  also,  cannot  have  taken  place  very 
early,  or  Chaucer  would  not  say,  when  he  introduces  his 
cook,  in  the  "  Canterbury  Tales :"  — 

"  He  loved  bet  the  taverne  than  the  shoppe." 

Bet  also  survives  in  a  name  which  few  will  now  associate 
with  its  true  origin,  Jifitavia,  which  was  originally  Jktuwe^ 
the  good  meadow,  in  contrast  with  Veiawe,  the  bad  meadow. 
Little  is  nowadays  coupled  with  leus  and  leaMy  both  of 
which  come  from  a  now  obsolete  adjective,  leas  or  le»»,  least 
being  but  a  contraction  of  its  regular  superlative,  leasest. 
Formerly  the  comparative  was  lesser^  and  the  substitution 
of  less  is  quite  recent  Fuller  always  uses  the  former ; 
Shakespeare  says,  in  "  Richard  III. :  **  — 

"  There  if  neV  a  man  in  ChriNtendom 
Caa  le$ier  hide  hin  love  or  hate  than  he; " 

and  Addison  speaks  of  "  the  lesser  Muse."  Even  the  regu- 
lar superlative  o{  little  survived  still  in  the  days  of  Shakci- 
peare,  for  in  "  Hamlet,**  IIL,  2,  we  read, — 

"  When  love  w  great,  the  HuUit  doubts  are  fear." 

We  preserve  in  the  name  of  the  Netfierhinds  an  Old 
English  comparative,  which  is  even  now  in  the  process  of 
disappearing  from  our  language.  The  adjective  neath,  now 
surviving  only  in  beneafJi^  furnished  formerly  the  derivative 
rvether^  which  is  now  almost  entirely  superseded  by  h/wer, 
Henry  VIII.,  however,  appealed  still  to  "  the  7i4'Mier  House 
of  Parliament,"  and  Milton  u»e»  it  continually,  e.  g. :  — 

"  Amoog  tbete  the  teat  of  man 
Earth  with  her  nether  ocean  circumfu»'d 
Their  pleaMnt  dwelling-place.*'  —Par.  Lott,  YIL  024; 


and, — 


In  jmAa  nether  woM  where  fliall  I  week 
Hia  bright  appeu'ancet,  or  ibotatep  trace? " 


As  in  nether,  to  we  have  in  rather  a]«o  a  comparative 
from  a  lost  adjective ;  the  original  form,  rattte,  ha»,  how- 


234  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

ever,  only  lately  become  obsolete,  for  not  only  Chaucer  says, 
in  the  "Miller's  Tale:"  — 

"  Why  ryse  ye  so  rathe  f    Ey  benedicite, 
What  eyleth  you?" 

but  Milton  also  says,  — 

"  Bring  the  rathe  primrose  that  forsaken  dies." 

It  was  this  use  of  rathe  in  the  sense  of  early,  which  led  to 
the  use  of  rather  as  meaning  at  first  earlier  only.  When 
Mandeville  (46)  speaks  of  "  the  rather  Town  of  Damyete,** 
he  means  an  older  town,  and  Spenser,  in  the  "  Shepherd's 
Calendar  "  for  February,  means  earlier  when  he  says  that 

"  The  rather  lambs  been  starved  with  cold." 
Ratherest,  which  Shakespeare  uses  in  "  Love's  Labor's  Lost,** 
IV.  2,  can  hardly  be  defended,  but  rathest  is  used  by  Bishop 
Sanderson  in  his  sermons,  and,  as  Dean  Trench  assures  us, 
even  quite  recently. 

Near  is  an  ill-treated  word,  which  was  originally  a  com- 
parative, the  contracted  form  of  neaher,  from  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  neah,  now  7iigh,  as  in  well-nigh  and  neighbor.  It  lost, 
afterwards,  its  comparative  meaning,  and  became  a  simple 
positive, — a.  degradation  to  which,  no  doubt,  the  sad  misspell- 
ing of  the  root  contributed  largely.  It  was  not  unfrequenlly 
disguised,  as  in  the  following  lines  from  the  "  Miller's  Tale: " 

"  Forsooth  this  proverbe  is  no  lye, 
Men  say  thus  always,  the  nye  slye 
Maketh  the  ferre  love  to  be  lothe." 

In  lief,  on  the  contrary,  we  have  a  positive  which  has 
lost,  almost  beyond  recovery,  its  once  very  popular  compar- 
ative degrees,  and  is  itself  fast  growing  obsolete.  It  has 
been  so  completely  set  aside  that  few  are  aware  of  its  close 
relationship  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  verb  leofan,  our  hve, 
and  its  connection  with  the  Old  English  leman,  once  lief- 
man  and  lefman,  the  dear  one,  and  as  such  continually  used 
of  both  sexes.  In  Chaucer's  time  it  still  had  this  first 
meaning  of  love,  as  in  the  "  Monk's  Tale : "  — 


ADJECTIVES.  235 

"  They  lyved  in  ioyc  and  in  felycite, 
For  eche  of  them  had  other  lefe  and  dere." 

The  modern  use  of  the  word  occurs,  however,  as  early  as 
Shakespeare,  who  says,  — 

"  I  had  as  lief  not  be  as  live  to  be  in  awe 
Of  such  a  thing  as  I  myself."  —  Julius  Ccesar. 

The  Germans  have  preserved  it  in  the  endearing  word  Ueb, 
which  they  connect  with  the  genitive  aller,  (of  all,)  to  make 
it  emphatic ;  and  thus  its  English  form  occurs  in  "  Henry 
VI.,"  (2)  1.1,- 

"  Will  ye,  mine  allerliefesi  sovereign?  " 
One  of  the  nicest  points  in  English,  not  only  for  foreign- 
ers, but  even  for  native  writers,  is  the  judicious  choice 
between  these  simple  forms  of  the  comparative  degrees 
and  those  obtained  by  the  addition  of  more  and  mostj  or, 
especially  before  participles,  better  and  best.  In  rare  cases 
only,  the  two  forms  serve  to  express  an  essential  difference 
of  meaning ;  generally  it  is  simply  a  question  of  euphony 
or  established  usage.  We  are  commonly  taught  not  to  add 
er  and  est  to  long  adjectives,  but  Chaucer,  and  the  best 
authors  down  to  the  seventeenth  century,  knew  no  such 
rule,  and  modern  writers  seem  to  pay  it  but  little  respect, 
if  we  may  judge  from  Sidney's  rejiningest,  and  Coleridge's 
safeliest,  which,  it  must  be  admitted,  do  not  sound  well. 
Another  class  of  adjectives  which  generally  avoid  the  reg- 
ular form,  are  those  made  by  the  addition  of  words  like 
full,  some,  less,  &c.  This  rule  was,  however,  formerly  as 
little  observed  as  the  preceding,  for  we  find  in  WickWffe  plen- 
teouslyer,  in  Fuller  easiliest,  in  Dryden  plainliest.  Chaucer 
has  wofuller  andjittingest.  Goldsmith  in  his  "  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field "  cunninger  and  cruelest,  Milton  uses  hopefullest,  and 
even  Washington  Irving  writes  hnowingest.  The  rule  that 
adjectives  of  Norman-French  origin  ending  in  ent,  ous,  ain, 
al,  ive,  &c.,  refuse  to  take  the  Saxon  terminations  as  neither 
suitable  nor  congenial,  is  more  generally  observed,  though 
here,  also,  Chaucer  indulges  in  royaller  and  gentillest.   Even 


236  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

in  our  day  great  liberties  are  taken  with  certain  adjectives, 
though  we  admit  that  if  the  author  of  "  Master  Humphrey's 
Clock  "  introduces  us  to  the  "  mildest,  amiablest,  forgiving- 
est-spirited,  longest-sufferingest  female,"  the  man  who  will 
pardon  such  a  string  of  bad  superlatives  on  any  other  score 
than  that  of  weak  humor,  must  be  the  mildest,  amiablest, 
&c.,  male  of  a  critic 

Occasionally  the  difference  of  form  enables  us  to  distin- 
guish a  predicate  from  an  attribute,  as  in  Byron's  lines,  — 

»  Till 
Some  worthier  should  appear,  if  I  have  found  such 
As  you  yourselves  shall  own  moretoorthy.^^ 

It  is  not  quite  so  easy  to  understand  Ben  Jonson's  admira- 
tion for  the  combined  use  of  these  double  forms,  especially 
those  of  the  superlative.  He  considered  them  "  as  a  kind 
of  English  atticism  or  eloquent  phrase  of  speech,  imitating 
the  manner  of  the  most  ancientest  and  finest  Grecians,  who 
for  more  emphasis  and  vehemencies'  sake  used  so  to  speak." 
It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  his  fanciful  preference 
is  shared  by  many  of  our  best  writers.  The  Bible  has  made 
us  familiar  with  "  the  Most  Highest "  and  "  the  most  strictest 
sect  of  our  religion."  Shakespeare  has  "  the  most  unhind- 
est  cut  of  all ; "  Milton,  in  his  "  Penseroso,"  "  But  first  and 
chief  est  with  thee  bring,"  and  Addison,  "  That  on  the  sea's 
extremest  border."     Byron  says  in  "  Manfred,"  A.  I,  — 

"  From  thy  own  lips  I  drew  the  charm 
Which  gave  all  these  their  chief  est  harm." 

Whatever  can  be  pleaded  in  defense  of  such  forms  by  poets, 
double  comparative  forms  can  hardly  be  excused  on  any 
plea.  "  More  sorer  punishments  "  in  Hebrews,  x.  29,  convey 
no  special  meaning  to  us,  and  Shakespeare's 

"  Nor  that  I  am  more  better  than  Prospero."  —  Tempest  I.  2, 

would  justify  one  of  the  thousand  emendations  bestowed 
upon  less  objectionable  expressions. 

It  is  an  open  question  yet,  even  with  the  masters  of  the 


ADJECTIVES.  237 

Science  of  Philology,  whether  the  compounds  of  most  with 
adverbs,  like  foremost,  inmost,  outmost  (utmost),  hindmost, 
&c.,  are  really  double  superlatives ;  but  no  such  doubt  is 
attached  to  the  curious  forms  innermost,  uppermost,  utter- 
most, and  Mndermost,  where,  alone  in  the  language,  the  two 
degrees  are  combined  in  the  same  word.  The  Cockney 
has  slyly  taken  advantage  of  these  eccentric  formations, 
and  fashions  for  his  private  use  new  words  of  the  kind, 
speaking  of  "  the  endermost  house  in  the  street,"  or  of  meet- 
ing "  the  Uggermost  man  in  the  parish  in  his  own  hettermost 
wig."  We  shall  hardly  be  justified  in  complaining  much  of 
the  liberty  he  takes  as  long  as  even  the  most  fastidious  of 
our  authors  use  such  superfluous  superlatives  as  amongst, 
amidst,  whilst,  and  hetwixt,  for  which  there  is  no  other  ex- 
cuse but  established  usage 


CHAPTER  Xm. 

PRONOUNS. 

"  Jurat  integros  accedere  fontes.  "  —  Juvenal. 

Well  have  pronouns  from  of  old  been  looked  upon  as 
"  venerable  relics  of  languages,"  for  the  more  we  know 
of  their  history,  the  more  clearly  can  we  trace  them,  not 
in  one  idiom  only,  but  in  the  whole  vast  family  of  Indo- 
European  languages,  up  to  the  very  fountain-head.  The 
veteran  Bopp  has  proved  them  to  be,  beyond  comparison, 
the  oldest  of  all  the  elements  in  our  languages,  and  even 
the  so-called  irregular  forms  have  been  shown  to  be  the 
most  regular,  inasmuch  as  they  have  preserved  the  ancient 
terminations  of  the  Aryan  with  greater  fidelity  than  either 
nouns  or  adjectives.  Belonging,  as  it  were,  to  man  him- 
self more  directly  and  intimately,  they  have  been  cher- 
ished by  him  with  all  the  partiality  and  tenderness  we  are 
apt  to  bestow  upon  what  is  thus  bound  up  with  our  individ- 
uality. For  their  great  and  main  purpose  is  to  express 
personality.  Some  express  it  as  it  belongs  to  the  speaker 
and  the  person  spoken  to,  and  with  it,  necessarily,  to  the 
relations  existing  between  them.  This  applies  mainl}-  to 
/  and  thou,  which,  as  a  matter  of  course,  are  inseparable 
from  the  idea  of  personality.  The  others  transfer  person- 
ality and  bestow  it  on  whatever  is  thus  spoken  of  Gram- 
marians tell  us  that  they  are,  as  their  name  indicates,  mere 
substitutes  for  the  noun,  which  we  do  not  like  to  repeat  as 
often  as  the  same  idea  is  reintroduced.  This  is  but  taking 
the  very  lowest  view  of  one  of  the  most  important  agents 


PRONOUNS.  239 

in  the  intercourse  between  man  and  man.  But  even  in  this 
aspect  we  must  not  overlook  the  fact  that  conveniences  and 
luxuries  belong  everywhere  to  a  high  state  of  civilization  and 
refinement.  It  is  not  otherwise  in  languages.  The  simplest 
and  rudest  are  content  with  expressing  what  is  absolutely 
necessary  for  their  general  purpose.  As  new  ideas  are 
evolved,  and  the  minds  of  the  people  are  more  and  more 
cultivated,  additional  words  not  only  are  required,  but  con- 
venient forms  also  are  introduced,  which  at  first  would  have 
been  deemed  superfluous.  Hence,  when  new  idioms  are 
discovered,  or  known  ones  compared  with  others,  one  of  the 
first  questions  asked  is  after  their  pronouns.  Their  number, 
and  abundant  but  correct  use,  is  considered  at  once  as  the 
best  evidence  of  the  elegance  and  the  refinement  of  a  lan- 
guage. They  are,  of  all  parts  of  speech,  the  most  distinct- 
ive feature  of  an  idiom.  They  remind  us  most  forcibly  of 
the  intimate  connection  between  the  outer  and  the  inner 
world,  which  we  can  here  also  observe  acting  upon  one 
another.  Ben  Jonson's  words  recur  almost  instinctively  to 
our  mind,  when  he  says  that  "  Language  is  the  mirror  of 
the  soul.  Speak  that  I  may  see  thee  !  For  it  springs  out  of 
the  most  retired  and  inmost  parts  of  us,  and  is  the  image 
of  the  parent  of  it  —  the  mind.  No  glass  renders  a  man's 
form  and  likeness  so  true  as  his  speech."  This  is  eminently 
the  case  with  pronouns,  and  may  be  noticed  even  in  little 
children.  At  first,  being  accustomed  to  hear  themselves 
spoken  of  as  the  baby,  or  Charles  and  Mary,  they  call  them- 
selves in  the  same  way,  and  say  "  Charley  wants  to  go  to 
bed,"  or  "  Mary  loves  papa."  It  is  a  great  step  in  the 
mental  development  of  a  child,  when  it  first  gives  expres- 
sion to  its  consciousness  of  individuality,  and  uses  the  proud 
/ —  a  step  which,  in  certain  imperfect  languages  like  the 
Algonquin,  has  never  yet  been  reached,  as  they  still  largely 
substitute  she  for  7. 

This  remarkable  individuality  of  pronouns  is  strikingly 
illustrated  by  the  historic  fact,  that  even  in  times  of  con- 


240  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

quest  and  subjugation,  they  have  ever  been  most  faithfully 
preserved  by  the  suffering  nations.  All  the  civilized  nations 
of  the  world  have  retained  them  with  unsurpassed  tenacity, 
and  our  English  has  given  most  interesting  proof  of  this 
conservatism  in  the  days  of  the  Conquest.  For  among  so 
many  thousand  words  imposed  upon  the  conquered  race 
by  the  victorious  Norman,  there  is  not  to  be  found  a  single 
pronoun.  No  Saxon,  it  seems,  could  ever  be  brought  to 
say  ye  or  vous,  for  /  and  you,  though  the  verb,  with  which 
the  pronoun  was  connected,  was  pure  French,  as  we  still 
say  I  vouch  and  you  march. 

There  lies,  however,  in  this  very  antiquity  and  uninter- 
rupted usefulness  through  so  many  ages,  one  of  the  great 
difficulties  in  analyzing  pronouns.  They  are  of  such  hoary 
old  age,  that  in  tracing  them  up  toward  the  fountain-head, 
we  are  soon  lost  in  utter  darkness,  where  history  is  silent 
and  even  inscriptions  are  wanting.  Besides,  Schlegel 
already  has  observed,  that  like  small  change  which  loses 
its  stamp  and  impress  by  continuous  transfer,  whilst  the 
larger  pieces  retain  it  clear  and  undimmed,  these  short, 
much  used  pronouns  lose  their  substance  and  characteristic 
marks  until  they  can  hardly  be  recognized.  Without  en- 
deavoring, therefore,  to  trace  them  in  all  instances  through 
the  various  changes  they  have  undergone,  we  shall  confine 
ourselves  here  to  such  hints  and  suggestions  as  seem  likely 
to  throw  more  light  on  their  present  form  and  meaning. 

The  great  variety  and  the  strict  use  made  of  personal  pro- 
nouns in  English  shows,  as  much  as  any  other  characteristic 
feature  of  our  people,  the  peculiar  value  attached  by  the 
•'*  free  Briton  "  to  his  person.  His  well-founded  self-'respect, 
his  proud  self-consciousness,  is  embodied  as  it  were  in  the 
capital  initial,  with  which  he  alone,  amid  all  modern  nations, 
adorns  the  pronoun  of  the  first  person,  /.  It  is  in  like 
manner  that  he  expresses  his  nationality  so  very  differently 
from  a  Frenchman  or  a  German.  The  latter  most  modestly 
says,  Ich  bin  aus  Deutschland^  "  I  am  from  Germany  ; "  he 


PRONOUNS.  241 

belongs  to  his  native  land,  and-all  he  has  to  do  with  it  is,  that 
he  came  from  it.  The  Frenchman  rises  proudly  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  identity  with  the  land  that  gave  him  birth  ; 
he  says,  Je  sms  FranQais,  "  I  am  French,"  and  feels  him- 
self a  part  of  the  great  nation.  But  the  Englishman,  more 
proudly  still,  at  once  presents  his  personal  individuality,  and 
says,  "  I  am  an  Englishman,"  presenting  himself  as  well 
defined  and  as  independent  as  his  own  sea-girt  land,  as 
haughty  and  conscious  of  strength  as  the  sea  that  he  loves 
to  rule.  Even  the  slang  term,  borrowed  from  naval  reg- 
isters, of  "A  No.  1,"  reminds  us  of  the  fact  that  the  pro- 
noun of  the  first  person  was  originally,  in  Hebrew,  for 
instance,  and  elsewhere,  ech,  the  same  as  one  (Ezekiel, 
xviii.  10).  It  has  passed  safely  through  the  Greek  eyw,  and 
the  Latin  ego  ;  it  reappears  in  Old  Norse  as  ek,  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  as  ic,  and  has  only  in  later  days  lost  its  consonant 
and  dwindled  down  to  simple  L  Ik  is  still  used  by  Chau- 
cer, who  says  in  the  "  Reve's  Prologue,"  — 

"  But  ik  am  olde,  me  lest  not  play  for  age." 
Sometimes  he  substitutes  Ich  or  Iche  ;  which  corresponds  to 
the  form  of  the  modern  German  ich ;   and  even  Skelton 
says,  (I.  95,)  for  « I  will,"  Ichyll,  and  (102,)  Ich  am. 

As  the  first  person  was  represented  by  a  word  equivalent 
to  one,  so  the  pronoun  of  the  second  person  corresponds  to 
the  numeral  two.  The  Greek  a-v  and  Suw,  the  Latin  tu  and 
duo,  are  clearly  one  and  the  same,  not  to  speak  here  of 
older  forms.  The  Anglo-Saxon  thu,  reduced  in  German  to 
du,  has  with  us  expanded  into  thou.  This,  it  is  well  known, 
was  once  universally  used  in  addressing  persons  of  any  rank 
in  life,  and  it  is  one  of  the  severest  losses  the  English  has 
ever  suffered,  that  this  pronoun  is  now  no  longer  employed. 
We  have  thus  lost  the  voice  of  peculiar  intimacy  and  special 
affection,  the  expression  of  the  tender  bond  that  unites  hus- 
band and  wife,  parents  and  children.  How  touching  is 
the  German  du,  so  suggestive  of  warmer  love  and  closer 
friendship  !  Even  the  Frenchman  can  yet  tutoyer,  little  as 
.   16 


242  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

we  may  be  disposed  to  sympathize  with  the  use  he  makes 
of  the.  privilege.  Nor  must  we  overlook  the  fact,  that  with 
the  pronoun  we  have  lost  another  beautiful  feature  which 
adorned  Old  English —  the  greater  variety  of  forms  in  the 
verb,  like  lovest,  lovedst,  &c.,  which  we  now  only  meet  with 
in  the  unique  thou  wast,  and  occasional  outbursts  of  exalted 
language.  The  word  seems  not  to  have  been  entirely  aban- 
doned until  the  seventeenth  century,  for  in  1648,  George 
Fox  says  in  his  journal :  "  When  the  Lord  sent  me  forth 
into  the  world,  I  was  required  to  thee  and  thou  all  men  and 
women,  without  any  respect  to  rich  or  poor,  great  or  small. 
But  ah  !  the  rage  that  then  was  in  priests,  magistrates,  and 
people  of  all  sort,  but  especially  in  priests  and  professors, 
for  though  thou  to  a  single  person  was  according  to  their 
own  learning,  their  accidence,  and  their  grammar  rules, 
they  could  not  bear  it."  It  is  known  from  other  sources 
that  in  those  days  thou  still  continued  to  be  used  as  a  sign 
of  familiarity  and  love,  but  it  was  already  considered  as 
not  quite  respectful  when  used  with  persons  of  superior 
rank  or  perfect  strangers.  The  Quakers,  however,  con- 
tinued it  only  as  they  found  it,  instead  of  following  the  fash- 
ion which  discarded  it  just  at  the  time  at  which  their  sect 
became  more  numerous  and  influential.  There  is  less  to 
be  said  in  defense  of  their  habit  of  using  the  indirect  thee 
under  almost  all  circumstances  for  thou.  It  is  true  that 
pronouns  generally  seem  to  claim  in  some  manner  an  ex- 
emption from  the  dominion  or  the  tyranny  of  Syntax.  The 
most  fastidious  authors  have  taken  great  liberties  with 
their  grammatical  forms,  and  who  would,  e.  g.^  think  of 
rectifying  Shelley's  bold  expression,  — 
"  Lest  there  be 
No  solace  left  for  thou  or  me." 

Grammatical  laws  of  any  kind  seem  to  have  so  slight  a 
hold  on  personal  pronouns,  that  a  mere  point  of  euphony  is 
considered  sufficient  to  justify  their  neglect,  and  this  uni- 
versal freedom  has  been  but  systematized  by  the  Quakers. 


PRONOUNS.  243 

There  is,  besides,  another  plea  which  may  be  used  in  their 
behalf.  It  is  a  very  old  and  general  custom  to  substitute 
an  oblique  case  for  the  nominative,  arising,  probably,  from 
the  fact  that  in  speaking  and  in  writing,  the  former  are  heard 
so  much  more  frequently  than  the  latter.  Whenever,  there- 
fore, a  foreign  language  has  been  adopted  by  a  nation,  as 
the  Latin  was  by  the  Gauls,  they  have  invariably  chosen 
that  form  which  appears  in  the  different  oblique  cases,  and 
not  the  nominative. 

Illiterate  people  especially  show  the  same  tendency  even 
now,  and  all  over  the  world  they  say,  almost  without 
exception,  me  for  I^  him  for  he,  and  vice-versa.  Sterne 
already  asks  the  question,  "  What  can  be  the  reason  that  all 
the  little  children  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  universally 
say  me  for  /?  "  (vi.  157.)  "  It  is  me!  "  is  the  almost  un- 
failing answer  to  the  usual  "  Who  's  there  ?  "  and  us  most 
frequently  fills  the  place  of  we.    "  Piers  Ploughman  "  (181) 

sings  early  — 

"  Lord  yworshipped  be  <Ae," 

and  even  Dryden  does  not  disdain  saying,  — 

"  Scotland  and  thee  did  in  each  other  live." 

Shakespeare,  faithfully  reflecting,  in  this  as  in  all  points, 
the  people's  language,  makes  his  fool  say  in  "  King  Lear  " 

(i-4)>- 

"  It  would  not  be  thee,  nuncle," 

but  he  goes  farther  than  that,  and  ventures  in  his  "  Twelfth 
Night"  (IL3),  upon  — 

"  Did  you  never  see  the  picture  of  we  three  ?  " 

Mr.  Gilpin,  in  his  "  Remarks  on  Forest  Scenes,"  says  that 
he  has  "  oftener  than  once  met  with  the  following  tender 
elegiacs  in  churchyards  in  Hampshire  :  — 

'  Him  shall  never  come  again  to  we, 
But  we  shall  surely  one  day  go  to  Ae.'  " 

The  pronoun  of  the  second  person  is  now  used  only  for 


244  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

specrfic  purposes,  such  as  to  give  vigor  and  solemnity,  or 

in  earnest  appeals.     Thus  Pope  says  in  his  "  Iliad."  — 

"  Ah,  wretch,  no  father  shall  thy  corpse  compose, 
Thy  dying  eyes  no  tender  mother  close !  " 

and  elsewhere,  — 

"  Clad  in  Achilles'  arms  if  thou  appear 
Proud  Troy  may  tremble  and  desist  from  war." 

In  like  manner  Milton  employs  it  in  "  Paradise  Lost,"  where 
he  says : — 

"And  thou,  enlightened  earth,  so  fresh  and  gay!  " 

If  we  were  to  venture  upon  substituting  you  for  thmi,  the 
effect  of  the  whole  passage  would  be,  if  not  lost,  at  least 
much  diminished  and  marred.  The  trite  proverb  that 
"  Familiarity  breeds  contempt,"  finds  its  practical  illustration 
in  this,  that  we  use  thou  for  the  lofliest  purpose  for  which 
language  can  be  employed  —  for  our  worship  of  the  Creator 
—  and  at  the  same  time  for  the  expression  of  contempt.  As 
soon  as  thou  ceased  to  be  heard  beyond  the  domestic  circle 
and  the  intimacy  of  friends,  it  became  a  sign  of  disregard, 
because  we  are  apt  to  treat  those  with  insulting  familiarity 
whom  we  do  not  respect.  Thus,  at  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's 
trial,  when  Coke  was  at  a  loss  for  argument  and  evidence 
alike,  he  fell  back  upon  the  easier  mode  of  attack,  and  said 
insultingly :  "All  that  Lord  Cobham  did  was  at  thy  instiga- 
tion, thou  viper,  for  I  thou  thee,  thou  traitor."  When  Sir 
Toby  Belch  is  urging  Sir  Andrew  Aguecheek  to  send  a 
challenge  to  Viola,  he  says :  — 

"  Thou  elfish-marked,  abortive  rooting  hog, 
Thou  that  wast  sealed  in  thy  nativity, 
The  slave  of  Nature  and  the  son  of  hell ! 
Thou  slander  of  thy  mother's  heavy  womb, 
Thou  rag  of  honour,  thou  detested:  " 

and  in  "  Twelflh  Night,"  "  Taunt  him  with  the  license  of 

ink  ;  if  thou  thou  'st  him  some  thrice,  it  shall  not  be  amiss." 

The  so-called  first  person,  representing  the  speaker,  and 

the  second  person,  the  person  spoken  to,  must  necessarily 


PRONOUNS.  245 

be  in  presence  of  each  other ;  hence,  in  English  at  least, 
their  respective  pronouns  require  and  have  nb  designation 
of  sex.  In  Hebrew,  on  the  contrary,  there  is  also  a  femi- 
nine form  for  the  second  person.  The  so-called  third  per- 
son, however,  of  whom  something  is  said  and  who  is  spoken 
of  as  absent,  needs  on  that  account  to  be  more  accurately 
defined.  This  has  led  to  the  only  instance  in  the  Eng- 
lish language  in  which  gender  is  actually  represented  in  the 
form  of  a  word  ;  we  have  retained  for  it,  in  a  manner,  the 
Anglo-Saxon  participles  of  the  verb  haetan,  (to  call,)  he,  heo, 
haet  or  hit.  The  masculine  has  remained  unchanged ;  the 
feminine,  now  she,  survives  in  the  hoo  of  Lancashire ;  and 
the  neuter  has  simply  lost  its  aspirate.  He  did  not  reach 
our  age  without  a  struggle  for  its  existence,  for  at  one 
time,  the  old  dramatists  show  us,  a  simple  a  was  threaten- 
ing to  assume  its  place.  Thus  we  find  in  "  Love's  Labor 's 
Lost"  (IV.  1),— 

"  Who  ever  a'  was,  a'  showed  a  mounting  mind." 
It  still  survives  among  the  unlettered,  and  Goldsmith  thus 
quotes :  "  A  troublesome  old  blade,  but  a'  keeps  as  good 
wines  as  any  in  the  whole  country."  She  was  first  substi- 
tuted by  Chaucer  for  the  heo  or  he,  which  was  in  universal 
use  before  him,  and  it  is  of  comparatively  recent  origin. 
Like  that,  what,  and  similar  forms,  it  represents  the  true 
neuter  of  Old  English,  to  which  class  may  perhaps  be  as- 
signed, also,  one  other  English  word,  athwart,  formed  after 
the  same  fashion. 

The  plural  form  we  has  come  down  to  us  almost  without 
change,  but  its  "  majestic  "  use  for  a  single  person  is  com- 
paratively modern.  Lord  Coke,  at  least,  tells  us  that  it  was 
first  so  employed  by  King  John,  who  introduced  Nos  and 
Noster  into  grants,  confirmations,  &c.,  or,  as  some  writer 
has  quaintly  observed,  thus  found  out  the  art  of  multiply- 
ing himself,  whereas  his  predecessors  had  been  content  with 
ego  and  meus.  Another  explanation  of  this  extraordinary 
substitution  is,  that  kings  include  in  this  we  all  their  officers 


246  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISa 

and'servants,  and  thus  express  the  collected  will  of  many  in 
one,  as  editors  include  all  who  think  like  them,  and  may  be 
charitably  supposed  to  utter  not  their  individual  opinions, 
but  those  of  a  party,  or  at  least  of  many.  But  what  shall 
we  say  of  our  own  we  ? 

There  is  abetter  excuse  for  the  substitution  of  you  instead 
of  the  old  thou.  When  it  was  first  introduced  —  probably  at 
the  ceremonious,  etiquette-loving  court  of  Byzantium  -^ 
it  was  deemed  a  courtesy  and  a  sign  of  uncommon  re- 
spect, thus  to  treat  one  as  if  he  were  or  represented  a  large 
number ;  as  if  he  were,  in  fact,  a  "  host  in  himself."  Be- 
sides, there  is  in  all  respectful  ways  of  addressing  others  a 
perceptible  tendency  to  avoid  the  direct  personality  ;  hence 
the  frequent  use  which  the  polite  French  makes  of  the  in- 
definite on  for  the  direct  vous.  In  our  own  day  there  has 
been  superadded  to  these  reasons  for  the  use  of  you,  a  third  : 
the  desire  to  be  equally  courteous  to  all,  which  has  led  to 
the  gradual  supremacy  of  that  pronoun,  which  more  than 
any  other  savors  of  republican  equality.  It  has,  however, 
undergone  strange  changes  before  it  obtained  that  general 
recognition.  At  first  you,  or  rather  ye,  as  it  was  then  ex- 
clusively written,  was  considered  more  polite  than  thou,  and 
thus  often  mixed  up  with  the  singular.  Chaucer  uses  it 
thus  (2256),— 

"  And  if  ye  will  not  so,  my  lady  sweete, 
Than  pray  I  the,  give  me  my  love 
Thou  blisful  lady  dere," 

and  in  842,  — 

"  And  ye,  Sir  Clerk,  let  be  your  shamefastedness." 
This  use  of  the  plural  pronoun  instead  of  the  singular  was 
by  no  means  contemporaneous  in  French,  nor  in  any  of  the 
other  Northern  languages,  and  hence  some  have  supposed 
that  the  English  may  have  borrowed  it  from  the  Dutch, 
where  it  was  already  common.  For  some  time,  however, 
the  two  pronouns  remained  side  by  side,  and  thou  was  not 
set  aside  for  religious  purposes  until  a  much  later  date. 


PRONOUNS.  247 

Even  in  the  "  Morte  d' Arthur  "  of  tlie  year  1485,  yow  and  thou 
occur  in  the  same  line  and  addressed  to  the  same  person. 
You  was  used  regularly  for  the  singular  as  early  as  1503, 
by  Sir  Thomas  More,  who  says  :  — 

"  Farewell  my  daughter  lady  Margarete, 
God  wotte  full  oft  it  grieved  hath  my  mynde, 
That  ye  should  go  where  we  should  seldom  mete. 
Now  I  am  gone  and  have  left  you  behynde." 

But  that  it  cannot  yet  have  obtained  fully  seems  to  appear 
from  John  Despanter's  Latin  Grammar,  who,  in  1517,  crit- 
icizes sharply  those  who  used  it,  and  whom  he  calls  "  dos- 
citatores."  In  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  century  it  is 
found  without  exception,  we  believe,  in  prefaces  to  books, 
where  the  author  addresses  his  public.  Then,  however,  a 
change  occurred,  and  it  was  not  considered  as  quite  so  re- 
spectful ;  at  least,  William  Lee,  bookseller,  who  published 
in  1640  a  book  entitled  "  Youth's  Behaviour  ;  or  Decencie 
in  Conversation  among  Men,"  says  distinctly :  "  Tou  should 
be  used  to  persons  of  lesser  rank.  Thou  and  Thee  to  friends 
and  superiors."  It  may  be,  however,  that  he,  like  many  of 
his  profession,  was  but  a  lover  of  the  "  good  olden  times," 
and  preferred  stating  his  wishes  and  preferences  in  the 
shape  of  actual  facts. 

There  arose  early,  besides,  a  difference  between  ^e,  the 
Anglo-Saxon  nominative  of  the  pronoun,  spelt  ge,  and  you^ 
derived  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  dative  and  accusative  eow. 
Chaucer  observes  the  distinction  with  such  uniformity,  that 
we  may  well  assume  it  to  have  been  the  rule  in  his  day. 
At  a  later  time,  however,  ye  gradually  usurped  the  place  of 
the  accusative,  and  gave  peculiar  force  to  that  case.  Thus 
Shakespeare  says  in  "  Henry  VIII : "  — 

"  The  more  shame  for  ye ;  holy  men  I  thought  f/e," 
and  Milton  almost  invariably  employs  it  so,  e.  g,  — 
"  His  wrath  which  one  day  will  destroy  ye  both," 

and  — 

*'  I  call  ye  and  declare  ye  now  returned 
Successful  beyond  hope,  to  lead  ye  forth." 


248  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

At  the  same  time  ye  seems  constantly  to  have  been  used  to 
express  extreme  familiarity,  and  thus  it  became  gradually 
comic  and  burlesque.     Thus  we  find  it  in  the  Prologue,  — 

"  Show  your  small  talents  and  let  that  suffice  ye, 
But  grow  not  vain  upon  it,  I  advise  ^e," 

and  in  Pope's  "  Iliad,"  (XXII.),— 

"  Yet  for  my  sons  I  thank  ye,  Gods !  'twas  •well, 
Well  have  they  perished,  for  in  fight  they  fell." 

Finally,  the  same  form  occurs  occasionally  now  as  a  mere 
expletive,  and,  naturally,  only  in  familiar  style,  as  when  Dr. 
King  uses  it,  (p.  574),  — 

"  He  '11  laugh  ye,  dance  ye,  sing  ye,  laugh,  look  gay, 
And  ruffle  all  the  ladies  in  his  play." 

It  is  curious,  and  to  the  observant  student  very  suggestive, 
to  notice  in  how  many  different  ways  different  nations  pre- 
fer to  address  one  another  among  themselves.  The  Ger- 
man has  not  less  than  three  distinct  modes :  he  treats  the 
superior  of  great  distinction  with  a  title  instead  of  a  pro- 
noun, and  speaks  to  him  as  der  Herr  Graf^  "the  Lord 
Count,"  but  with  the  verb  falls  back  to  the  ordinary  way  of 
using  the  third  person  plural.  This,  the  pronoun  Sie,  he 
employs  for  all  above  or  on  an  equality  with  him ;  whilst  he 
grants  the  friendly  Du,  our  thou,  to  those  he  loves  and  holds 
dear ;  the  lower  dependent  or  subordinate  is  occasionally 
still  reminded  of  his  inferiority  by  a  rude  Er.  The  French 
revolution  abolished  this  degrading  Er  in  the  army,  the  Revo- 
lution of  1848  made  an  end  to  the  half  contemptuous  Du, 
and  now  Sie  remains  almost  the  exclusive  mode  of  address 
for  all  classes  of  society.  The  Danes  follow  the  German 
rule,  but  prefer  the  singular  of  the  verb.  The  Dutch  have 
so  entirely  substituted  you  for  thou.,  that  the  latter  has  com- 
pletely dropped  out  of  the  language,  and  the  form  of  the 
second  person  of  the  verb  is  hardly  ever  given  in  grammars 
even,  unless  it  be  for  the  imperative.  Hence  in  poetry 
they  address  the  sun  and  the  moon  and  all  lifeless  objects 


PRONOUNS.  249 

alike  with  you^  and  the  plural  of  the  verb ;  and  even  the 
actor  in  his  monologue  has  to  become  a  plural  to  himself. 
It  sounds  strange  indeed  to  the  foreigner,  to  hear  them  use 
one  and  the  same  pronoun  for  God  and  king,  wife,  child, 
and  friend,  heaven,  and  earth,  and  horse,  and  dog.  The 
Russian  and  the  Greek  use  thou  for  all  ordinary  purposes, 
but  you,  as  do  almost  all  nations  now,  when  they  are  particu- 
larly polite.  The  Pole  is  still  faithful  to  his  ancient  thou, 
but  he  adds  courteously  the  word  for  Lord  or  Lady,  saying, 
Mash  Pan,  "  Thou  Lord."  The  Italian,  Spaniard,  and  Por- 
tuguese, all  employ  the  most  indirect  way  of  addressing  each 
other,  substituting  expressions  like  "  Your  Mercy,"  "  Your 
Grace,"  and  their  representative  pronouns  for  our  you,  actu- 
ally saying  to  each  other,  "  How  is  she  to-day  ?  "  "  I  thank 
her."  The  Persian  uses  exceptionally  our  you,  for  gener- 
ally all  over  the  Orient  the  custom  prevails  of  employing 
instead  a  mode  of  circumlocution  which  avoids  all  direct- 
ness so  repugnant  to  Oriental  courtesy.  Hence  they  pre- 
fer saying,  "  The  gentleman  says,"  or,  "  The  son  of  my  Lord 
shall  be  served."  They  is,  like  she,  it,  thou,  and  their,  simply 
a  part  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  demonstrative,  used  as  a  per- 
sonal pronoun. 

The  possessive  pronouns  are  in  English,  as  in  most 
known  languages,  nothing  more  than  derivative  formations 
of  the  personal  pronouns,  and  it  matters  little  whether  they 
are,  as  some  maintain,  the  genitives  of  the  latter,  or,  as 
others  believe,  adjectives  made  from  them  by  the  addition 
of  en.  So  much  is  certain,  that  their  form  and  meaning 
were  for  some  time  of  a  most  undecided  character.  Thus 
Wickliffe  employs  oure  and  youre  not  as  possessive  pronouns, 
but  as  genitives  plural,  and  says  oure  dreed,  the  dread  of 
us,  and  youre  feer,  the  fear  of  you.  What  is  more  interest- 
ing for  our  day,  is  the  gradual  shortening  which  mine  and 
thine  have  undergone  in  former  ages,  and  are  still  under- 
going. Originally  they  were  probably  the  only  forms  used ; 
afterwards,  and  for  some  generations,  the  full  forms  were 


250  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

preferred  before  vowels,  and  the  shortened  forms  my  and 
thy  before  consonants,  in  order  to  avoid  the  meeting  of 
many  consonants.  Sir  John  Mandeville  already  has  (59), 
«  Thin  hosen  "  and  ''thi  schon,"  and  (179),  "  My  wif "  and 
"  myn  husbond."     Chaucer  observes  the  rule,  saying,  — 

"  Rise  up  my  wif,  my  love,  my  lady  fre,"  (10012), 

and  — 

«  With  thyn  eighen  Columbine,"  (10015). 

In  our  Bible  version  we  read  accordingly  (Psalms  Iv.  13)  : 
"  But  it  was  thou,  a  man  mine  equal,  my  guide,  and  mine 
acquaintance,"  and  the  same  distinction  is  occasionally  ob- 
served by  modern  writers.  Thus  we  find  Hamlet  giving 
this  advice,  — 

"  Give  every  man  thine  ear,  but  few  thy  voice." 

Sir  Walter  Scott  says,  — 

"  Thine  ardent  symphony  sublime  and  high," 
and  Byron  has,  — 

"  Time  writes  no  wrinkle  on  thine  azure  brow." 

Generally,  however,  but  little  attention  is  given  to  the  dif- 
ference between  the  two  forms ;  on  the  contrary,  even  the 
shortened  my  is  too  long  for  modern  haste,  and  must  needs 
give  way  to  me,  simply.  Fenimore  Cooper  observes  on 
the  differeilce  between  the  old  pronunciation,  preserved  in 
the  States,  and  the  more  recent,  that  "  my  horse,  my  dog, 
the  usual  American  mode,  and  me  horse,  me  dog,  the  Eng- 
lish counterpart,  are  equally  wrong,  the  first  by  an  affected 
egotism,  the  last  from  offensive  arrogance."  The  wrong  may 
exist,  but  the  reasons  are  hardly  stated  with  fairness.  The 
English  usage  has  at  least  this  advantage,  that  it  pre- 
sents a  means  of  emphasizing  and  dignifying  the  pronoun, 
of  which  the  Americans  are  deprived  by  their  uniform  pro- 
nunciation. It  is  wasteful  to  say  my  servant  when  no  other 
servant  is  spoken  of,  but  there  is  advantage  in  the  difference 
between  "  my  Lord,"  addressed  to  the  Creator,  and  the  ordi- 
nary "  my  lord,"  given  to  peers,  the  orthodox  pronuncia- 
tion of  which  now  is  "  me  Lud." 


PRONOUNS.  251 

Ours  and  yoiirs  are,  among  the  illiterate,  liable  to  even 
more  violent  ill-treatment,  being  changed  into  ourn  and 
yourn,  and  yet  apologists  have  been  found  for  this  vul- 
garism also,  which  they  claim,  like  most  vulgarisms,  and 
especially  Americanisms,  to  be  but  a  well-preserved  relic  of 
former  days.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  formerly  our  own 
and  your  own  were  often  thus  contracted,  and  it  is  not  im- 
possible that  this  may  have  given  rise  to  the  provincialism 
above  mentioned.  Master  R.  Laneham,  keeper  of  the 
Council  Chamber,  and  a  traveled  man,  tells  us  of  some 
person  who  presented  a  petition  to  Queen  Elizabeth  at 
Kenilworth,  in  which  he  took  even  greater  liberties,  for 
after  praying  for  her  Majesty's  perpetual  felicity,  he  finishes 
with  the  humblest  submission  of  him  and  hizzen.  His'n 
and  her'n  may  have  had  the  same  origin,  being  contracted 
from  his  own  and  her  own,  though  the  use  of  the  dative 
plural  in  Old  English,  hisum  and  herum,  might  possibly 
have  had  the  same  effect.  The  old  Bible  version  has 
"  The  kyngdom  of  hevenes  is  herumJ^  They  survive  now 
only  in  affected  style,  as  when  Sam  Slick  says,  "  Drinking 
beer  out  of  my  pot  and  refusing  his'n,*  or  in  old-fashioned 
songs  like  the  Berkshire  ditty,  — 

"  But  t'  other  young  maiden  looked  sly  at  me, 
And  from  her  seat  she  ris'n  — 
Let 's  you  and  I  go  our  own  way, 
And  we  '11  let  she  go  sAis'n." 

Its  is  one  of  the  most  recent  words  of  the  English  lan- 
guage, and  as  such,  a  striking  illustration  of  what  may  be 
called  the  life  of  an  idiom.  It  was  utterly  unknown  in  the 
days  of  true  Old  English,  because  as  soon  as  a  thing  was 
regarded  as  the  possessor  of  another  thing,  it  became  to 
that  extent  personified,  and  the  personal  pronouns  his  and 
her  were  employed.  Spenser  has  no  its  in  his  works ;  in 
fact,  it  was  unknown  in  the  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth  and 
King  James.  Mandeville  shows  his  ignorance  of  such  a 
word  by  saying,  "  Of  that  cytee  bereth  the  contree  his  name," 


252  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

(256)-,  and  Chaucer  has :  "  But  loke  that  it  (the  whele,) 
have  his  spokes  alle,"  (Canterbury  Tales,  7838).  Bacon  says, 
"  Learning  has  his  infancy,  when  it  is  but  beginning  and 
almost  childish  ;  then  his  youth  when  it  is  luxuriant  and 
juvenile ;  then  his  strength  of  years,  when  it  is  solid  and 
reduced,  and  lastly  his  old  age,  when  it  waxeth  dry  and  ex- 
hausted." Evidently  its  is  wanting,  and  every  time  it  is 
needed,  supplied  by  his.  Hence  we  find  the  same  substi- 
tution repeatedly  in  the  Bible :  "  The  fig-tree  putteth  forth 
her  green  figs  "  (Sol.  Song,  ii.  13),  and  "  the  tree  is  known 
by  his  fruit "  (Matt.  xii.  33).  In  fact,  this  remarkable  pro- 
noun occurs  in  all  but  five  times  in  our  Bible  version,  which 
generally  substitutes  his  or  of  it,  as,  "  It  (another  beast)  had 
three  ribs  in  the  mouth  of  it  between  the  teeth  of  it  ** 
(Daniel  vii.  5),  or  thereof  as,  "  Sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the 
evil  thereof  These  remedies  seem  to  have  been  early  ap- 
plied, for  we  find  already  in  the  very  ancient  "  Auturs  of 
Arther,"  (Camden  Soc.  11-13,)  what  is  probably  the  oldest 
instance  of  such  a  substitution  :  — 

"  For  I  will  speke  with  the  sprete, 
And  of  hit  woe  wille  I  wete, 
Gif  that  I  may  hit  boles  bete 
And  the  body  bare." 

It  was  probably  from  the  somewhat  anomalous  use  of  it, 
simply,  instead  of  of  it,  that  the  modern  its  was  derived. 
The  earliest  case  of  it  being  used  as  a  possessive  pronoun, 
occurs  in  the  year  1548,  in  the  Bible,  where  we  find  "  The 
love  and  deuocion  towardes  God  also  hath  it  infancie  and 
hath  it  commyng  forward  in  growth  of  age."  Sir  Thomas 
More  generally  writes  it  hit,  when  he  uses  it  thus  as  a  pos- 
sessive pronoun  derived  from  it.  Ben  Jonson  surprises 
us  by  writing  "  need  will  have  its  course,"  though  the  word 
itself  is  not  even  mentioned  in  liis  grammar.  These  early 
cases  of  its  must,  however,  be  viewed  with  great  caution. 
Thus  we  are  generally  told  that  Shakespeare  has  it  three 
or  four  times ;  in  '*  Measure  for  Measure  "  (I.  2),  we  find 
"  Heaven  grant  us  its  peace,"  and  — 


PRONOUNS.  253 

" each  following  day- 
Became  the  next  day's  master,  till  the  last 
Made  former  wonders  i<s," 

but  the  learned  Mommsen  discovered  that  these  readings 

only  occur  in   the  later  editions,  which  did   not  appear 

until  1623,  twelve  years  after  the  publication  of  the  Bible. 

Even  Milton  evidently  preferred  the  substitutes,  as  in  the 

lines,  — 

"  The  fig-tree  spreads  her  arms,  and  daughters  grow  about  the  mother- 
tree."  —  Pararftse  Lost,  IX.  1100. 

He  has  its  but  twice,  (Paradise  Lost,  I.  254,  and  IV.  813,) 
and  avoids  it  in  many  places,  though  in  his  day  it  was  already 
popular.  Shakespeare  had,  in  his  day,  shown  a  repugnance 
to  him  and  her  for  the  neuter  idea,  by  carefully  avoiding 
the  occasion  for  the  use  of  the  pronoun,  and  the  idea  itself 
probably  did  not  exist  in  the  mind  of  these  authors.  This 
shows  beautifully  the  intimate  connection  between  the  mind 
of  a  people  and  their  language,  and  the  reciprocal  action. 
For  the  use  of  its  not  merely  changed  the  form  of  English, 
but  actually  modified  the  manner  of  thinking.  Dean 
Trench  has  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  a  careful 
sifting  and  thorough  investigation  of  the  mere  words  of  a 
literary  work  would  as  certainly  assign  it  its  time  in  Eng- 
lish literature,  as  the  same  process  has  done  for  ancient 
literature,  when  applied  to  the  works  of  ancient  writers. 
Thus  Chatterton's  poems,  which  pretended  to  have  been 
written  by  a  monk  living  in  the  eleventh  century,  could 
have  been  stamped  as  a  forgery  upon  the  ground  of  a 
single  line :  "  Life  and  all  its  goods  I  scorn."  Any  well- 
read  scholar  would  have  known  that  the  word  its  did  not 
exist  for  several  hundred  years  after  the  assumed  date 
of  the  work. 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  English  that  it  has  no  reflexive  pro- 
noun, and  that  neither  the  Anglo  Saxon  nor  the  Norman 
French  have  ever  fully  supplied  the  want.  The  only  sub- 
stitute is  found  in  the  words  self  and  own.    The  former  is 


254  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

strangely  connected  with  the  possessive  pronoun,  and  its 
etymology  has  given  rise  to  many  discussions  among  gram- 
marians. Perhaps  no  stronger  proof  of  the  difficulty  of 
the  subject  can  be  adduced,  than  the  fact  that  even  the 
great  Jacob  Grimm  acknowledged  the  necessity  of  chang- 
ing altogether  opinions  he  had  formerly  held  on  the  subject. 

In  Anglo-Saxon,  self  was  coupled  with  the  personal  pro- 
noun, and  produced  combinations  like  ic  self,  thurh  me  selfne, 
"thro'  me  self,"/rom  me  selfum,  and  min  selfes  beam, "  my  own 
child."  This  constant  use,  varied  only  in  a  few,  probably 
ill-copied  instances,  proves  clearly  that  self  was  not,  as  is 
frequently  stated,  a  noun.  Soon  after  the  decline  of  the 
pure  Saxon,  however,  self  reappears  combined  with  the  pos- 
sessive pronoun,  and  has,  in  Old  English  at  least,  become 
indeclinable.  A  few  traces  of  the  old  declension  show 
themselves  occasionally  in  forms  like  /  myselven,  he  him- 
selven,  and  ye  yourselven,  but  evidently  without  any  differ- 
ence in  signification. 

This  constant  combination  led  naturally  to  the  result  that 
self  began  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  noun,  preceded  by  a  pos- 
sessive pronoun  —  an  impression  which  was  still  further 
strengthened  by  the  independent  employment  of  the  com- 
pound pronoun,  as  when  Chaucer  already  says  :  "  This  is  to 
sayn,  myself  hath  been  the  whippe*^  From  that  date  self 
appears  fully  established  as  a  noun,  and  is  used  even  with- 
out a  pronoun,  as  in  the  line  of  Moore's  poem,  — 
"  Too  strong  for  Allah's  self  to  burst," 

and  hence  come  still  more  recent,  inelegant  phrases,  as  my 
own  self  and  your  own  dear  self. 

Himself  and  themselves  must  originally  have  been  object- 
ive cases,  with  the  two  words  in  apposition  to  each  other. 
Hence  the  tendency  to  avoid  such  awkward  and  obscure 
forms,  and  to  substitute  for  them  hisself  and  theirselves^ 
made  in  analogy  with  the  other  forms,  but  not  admitted  into 
classic  English,  and  hissel  and  theirselves  in  the  dialects  of 
the  North  of  England. 


PRONOUNS. 


255 


Pronouns  enable  us  in  another  aspect  to  establish  the 
claims  of  our  English,  the  study  of  which  is  so  sadly  neg- 
lected for  the  benefit  of  Latin  and  Greek,  to  a  full  equality 
at  least  of  etymological  interest  with  the  ancient  languages. 
These,  we  are  told,  have  a  beautiful  system  of  suggesting 
by  the  initials  the  nature  of  the  pronoun ;  the  demonstra- 
tive pronouns  having  — 
In  Greek  a  t:  t<J  the  interrogative,  now  jr: 

TOWTO, 

T<J<ro9,  TToaos, 

TOiOf,  iroios, 

Tore,  wore, 


In  Latin  a  t :  talis,  the  interrogative  qu :  qualis, 

tantus,  quantus, 

tot,  quot, 

tam,  quam, 

&c.,  quomodo, 

quorsum. 

But  we  ought,  surely,  not  to  forget  that  the  Germanic  lan- 
guages have  a  similar  system,  in  noways  inferior,  and  based 
mainly  upon  their  characteristic  sound,  the  aspirate.  This  is 
represented  in  modern  English,  in  spite  of  all  changes  and 
losses,  by  instances  like  the  following :  — 

He,  his,  him.  The,    ( German)  Der,       Who,        ( German)  Wer. 

Hit,  here,  That,  those,         Dieser,  What,  whose, 

Here  and  its  compounds,  There  and  its  compounds.  Where  and  itscomp.  Wo. 


(H)now, 
Hence, 

Thence, 

(W)how, 
Whence, 

Hither, 
&c., 

Thither, 

They,  them,  their, 

Whither, 
Whom, 

This,  these, 

Thus, 

Da, 

Though, 
Then, 

Dann, 

When, 
Whether, 
Why, 
Which, 

Wann. 
Weder. 
Warum. 
Welcher. 

At  the  same  time  the  ancient  form  of  English  in  Anglo- 


266  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

SaXon  enables  us  to  see  the  discreet  economy  with  which 
the  old  pronoun  has  been  made  subservient  to  all  the  prac- 
tical purposes  of  modern  wants.  Thus  the  Anglo-Saxon 
interrogative  pronoun  hva  was  declined  in  the  following 
manner :  — 


MA8C. 

NEUT. 

Nom.  hva. 

Gen. 

Dat. 

Ace.    hvone, 

Abl. 

hvaes, 
hvam, 

hvi, 

hvaet, 
hvaet. 

and  from  this  complex 
thus:  — 

scheme  we 

obtain  all  our 

pronouns, 

MASC. 

NEUT. 

Nom.  who. 

Gen. 

Obj.   whom, 

Abl. 

whose, 

why,  (adverb,) 

what, 
what, 

to  which  we  only  add  which,  from  Anglo-Saxon  hveleik,  cor- 
responding to  svaleik,  our  such,  and  whether,  from  Anglo- 
Saxon  hwdder,  formerly  used  to  express  —  which  of  two, 
but  now  employed  only  as  a  conjunction. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

HOW   WE    COUNT. 

"  Take  thy  fingers." 

There  is  no  class  of  words  of  more  interest  for  the  his- 
tory of  nations  than  the  numerals,  for  they  afford  us  one 
of  the  most  striking  evidences  of  the  unity  of  the  race, 
divided  as  it  now  is  into  so  many  nations.  Men  to  this 
day  use  everywhere  the  same  way  of  counting.  From  the 
nation  that  leads  civilization  at  the  head  of  all  Christendom, 
to  the  very  dregs  of  humanity,  the  heathen  cannibal,  men 
have  the  same  system  of  numerals.  Even  the  forms  differ 
so  little,  that  we  probably  only  need  a  better  knowledge  of 
the  laws  of  sound  and  the  history  of  words  to  find  that  they 
all  belong  to  one  and  the  same  family.  Hence  they  are 
even  now  looked  upon  as  one  of  the  safest  criterions  by 
which  to  judge  of  an  original  relationship  between  lan- 
guages. Where  they  resemble  each  other  in  any  two  idi- 
oms, there,  certainly,  a  close  tie  of  common  descent  or  com- 
mon fate  is  soon  discovered.  They  aid  us  as  some  casual 
expression  which  flits  across  the  face  of  a  long-forgotten 
friend,  or  the  use  of  some  peculiar  but  well-known  phrase, 
reveals  to  us  all  of  a  sudden  the  companion  of  former  days, 
or  the  son  of  a  kinsman.  Nations  seem,  for  some  impor- 
tant reason,  to  adhere  with  uncommon  tenacity  to  the  forms 
of  their  numerals,  and  to  no  class  of  words  can  the  well- 
known  words  of  Suetonius  be  more  forcibly  applied :  "  Tu 
enim,  Ccesar,  civitatem  dare  potes  homimbus,  verbis  non  potes, 
inquit  Capito."  (De  Illustr.  Gr.  XXIII.)  For  no  misfor- 
17 


258  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

tune  and  no  conquest  has  ever  yet  deprived  a  nation  of  its 
numerals,  whatever  may  have  been  the  fate  of  other  parts 
of  its  language.  Thus  it  is  in  our  English.  In  spite  of  the 
Norman-French  conquest,  and  in  spite  of  the  long  rule  of 
Norman  sovereigns,  not  only  have  we  safely  kept  all  our 
Saxon  numerals,  but  only  two  foreign  forms  have  obtained 
admission  to  their  number.  The  Anglo  Saxon  possessed 
no  ordinal  corresponding  to  its  cardinal  two,  and  used,  in- 
stead of  it,  the  word  other,  as  is  still  done  in  the  German 
anderthalb.  Hence  the  Normans  found  it  comparatively 
easy  to  introduce  and  to  obtain  ready  admission  for  their 
word  second.  This  comes  from  the  Latin  sequor,  to  follow, 
and  retains  always  something  of  the  meaning  of  its  Roman 
ancestor,  as  when  we  propose  to  "  second  a  question,"  and 
thus  follow  the  first  mover,  or  when  we  condemn  the  "  second 
in  a  duel,"  because  he  followed  his  principal  to  the  place  of 
combat.  Its  application  to  time  has  another  and  very  curi- 
ous origin.  The  Romans,  it  is  well  known,  facilitated  the 
operation  of  counting  by  the  use  of  little  pebbles,  calcula, 
from  which  we  derive  our  own  word,  to  calculate.  One 
of  these,  a  peculiarly  small  pebble,  was  called  scrupulum, 
and  was  used  to  denote  what  we  also  call  a  "  minute  "  peb- 
ble, now  a  minute.  When  they  proceeded  to  a  subdivis- 
ion they  denoted  one  sixtieth  of  a  minute  by  a  secundum 
scrupulum,  and  thus  we  obtained,  after  the  omission  of  the 
word  scrupulum,  the  name  of  second  for  the  same  small 
space  of  time.  The  only  other  numeral  of  foreign  origin 
in  our  language  is  million,  from  the  Latin  mille,  with  an 
augmentative  syllable  superadded. 

This  faithful  and  steady  adherence  to  our  numerals  is 
perhaps  partly  to  be  ascribed  to  their  small  number,  of 
which  superficial  observers  have  no  conception.  There  is 
no  nation  on  earth  that  counts  beyond  the  ten  fingers  of  the 
liands.  They  gave,  and  still  give,  the  only  mode  of  count- 
ing. A  trace  of  this  original  manner  survives  in  modem 
English :  there  is  a  custom  preserved  in  technical  language 


HOW  WE  COUNT.  259 

at  least,  although  going  out  of  use  in  ordinary  conversation, 
to  call  the  first  ten  numbers  digits,  from  the  Latin  word  for 
"  finger.'*  It  was  formerly  universally  so  employed,  and  we 
read  in  Sir  Thomas  Brown's  "  Vulgar  Errors  :  "  "  Not  only 
the  numbers  7  and  9,  from  considerations  abstruse,  have  been 
extolled  by  most,  but  all  or  most  other  digits  have  been  as 
mystically  applauded."  It  is  well  known  that  certain  nations 
of  antiquity  did  not  even  go  so  far  as  ten,  but  were  content 
with  counting  only  the  number  of  fingers  of  one  hand. 
Thus,  when  Homer  alludes  to  a  shepherd  who  counts  his 
sheep,  he  employs  the  word  irefiirea-Oat,  as  if  he  were  to  say 
"  he  fived  them,"  and  in  other  authors  we  find  in  like  man- 
ner, TTc/ATra^civ  used  to  define  counting  up  to  five.  Even 
now  some  tribes  of  Indians  go  no  farther,  and  we  are  as- 
sured by  modern  travelers  that  there  are  savages  whose 
numbers  go  only  as  far  as  1,  2,  and  3,  at  which  point  their 
language  fails,  and,  instead  of  four,  they  employ  a  word 
which  means  at  the  same  time  "  many  "  and  "  incalculable 
multitudes."  Then  the  connection  only  can  show  in  which 
of  its  different  meanings  it  is  to  be  taken. 

Nations  have,  of  course,  numerals  beyond  the  number  of 
fingers,  but  after  ten  they  are  invariably  compounds,  thus 
showing  that  after  all  we  possess  genuine  names  of  num- 
bers only  up  to  ten.  Our  own  numerals  afford,  in  this  as- 
pect, peculiar  information  as  to  the  manner  in  which  this 
remarkable  class  of  words  has  generally  been  formed.  Our 
one  is  a  derivative  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  an,  so  strikingly  re- 
sembling the  Greek  cj/,  and  the  Latin  unus,  as  to  suggest 
at  once  their  common  descent  from  the  Aryan  stock.  In 
German  the  radical  ein  serves  to  this  day  to  designate  unity, 
as  well  as  the  indefinite  sense  of  the  noun  which  it  pre- 
cedes. In  English,  however,  at  a  very  early  period,  the  orig- 
inal an  branched  off  into  a  full  form  to  express  the  pre- 
cise meaning  of  the  numeral,  and , a  shortened  one  to  serve 
as  an  indefinite  article.  The  former  has  now  assumed  the 
form  of  one,  but  retained,  even  in  Old  English,  so  much  of 


« 
260  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH.  * 

the  original,  that  our  any  was  then  written  ony,  and  in  the 
oldest  MSS.  had  even  its  two  genders.  Thus  we  find, 
"And  gif  oni  other  onie  cumen  her  ongenes,"  which  we  have 
to  translate  :  "And  if  any  man  or  any  woman  come  against 
her."  The  shortened  form  is  now  an,  which,  however,  in 
its  turn,  has  undergone  a  farther  reduction,  and  before  con- 
sonants at  least  is  always  a.  Our  Bible  version  uses  an 
indiscriminately  before  vowels  and  consonants,  and  even 
we  respect  an  aspirate  A,  and  speak  of  "  an  humble  faith." 
Our  two  is  derived  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  tvd,  which  in 
like  manner  corresponds  closely  with  the  Greek  hvo,  and 
the  Latin  duo,  whilst  in  German  the  prevailing  tendency  of 
changing  the  dental  into  a  sibilant,  has  resulted  in  zwei. 
Of  its  modern  forms  but  one  is  really  important.  The 
ancient  tvd  had  a  dual,  twegen.  The  dual,  however,  is 
one  of  those  inflections  which  all  languages  drop  as  they 
become  modernized,  so  that  even  the  once  so  important  and 
useful  Greek  dual  does  not  appear  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, simply  because  it  was  no  longer  in  use  in  common 
Greek.  Thus,  also,  the  dual,  found  so  largely  and  so  fully 
developed  in  Old  Norse  and  Old  German,  has  utterly  disap- 
peared as  a  grammatical  form.  A  few  dual  words  only 
have  survived  and  serve  now  as  evidences  of  former  ages  ; 
among  them  the  form  of  twain.  We  still  use  it  fully 
when  we  speak  of  "  cleft  in  twain.''  Byron  has  it  regu- 
larly in  — 

"  Ye  seek  it  of  the  ttoain  of  least  respect  and  interest," 
and  Longfellow  uses  it  in  the  same  manner,  saying,  — 

*'  Let  there  be  no  further  strife  nor  enmity 
Between  us  <w>atn." 

The  true  nature  of  the  dual  seems  very  early  to  have  been 
forgotten  by  the  people,  or  we  would  not  meet  so  soon  with 
the  contracted  form  twin,  and  its  absurd  or  at  least  most  in- 
correct plural,  twins.  We  shorten  it  still  farther  in  twilight 
and  from  the  compound  between  we  derive  a  preposterous 
superlative  betwixt.  The  former  was  once  used  with  a 
instead  of  be,  as  in  Chaucer's  lines :  — 


HOW  WE  COUNT.  ,     261 

"  Thy  wife  and  thou  mole  hange  atwynne, 
For  that  betwyt  you  shall  be  no  synne."  —  Miller^s  Tale. 

From  the  numeral  three,  recalling  to  us  the  rpCa,  and  tria 
of  the  ancients,  the  Anglo-Saxons  made  an  ordinal  thri/d, 
which  we  have  changed,  according  to  the  prevailing  ten- 
dency to  transpose  the  r,  into  third.  A  curious  descendant 
of  the  first  form  remains,  however,  in  modern  English. 
Certain  districts  were,  it  seems,  of  old  divided  into  thirds, 
and  these  were  called  "  third  things,"  in  the  old  sense  of 
the  word  thing.  Thus  we  find,  in  Magna  Charta,  a  thrithing 
already  spoken  of,  and  the  same  term  is  repeated  in  Stat. 
21,  Henry  III.  c.  10,  (1260,)  and  from  it  are  probably  derived 
the  three  Ridings  of  Yorkshire,  the  initial  th  having  been  lost 
at  an  early  day.  Our  Saxon  fathers  formed  words  for  the 
numerals  up  to  nine,  but  there  their  power  of  invention 
seems  to  have  abandoned  them,  for  ten  is  not  an  original 
word.  It  comes  from  the  Saxon  verb  tynan,  to  close,  to 
shut  in  or  up,  expressive  of  the  simple  fact  that  when  the 
calculation  had  gone  on  to  the  extent  of  the  ten  fingers, 
one  after  another  having  been  turned  in,  both  hands  were 
found  "  closed  "  or  "  shut  in."  Nor  is  this  use  of  the  ancient 
word  so  entirely  obsolete,  that  it  could  not  be  proved  even 
from  modern  usage.  There  are  very  few  forms,  in  the 
purely  Saxon  districts  at  least,  of  which  a  certain  portion 
does  not  still  bear  the  name  of  tyning,  e.  g.,  the  Middle 
Tyning  or  the  Upper  Tyning.  The  designation  arose,  like 
the  more  modern  close,  from  the  fact  that  these  lands  were 
carefully  inclosed  and  cultivated,  unlike  the  common,  the 
not  inclosed  lands,  which  lay  waste.  From  the  same  verb 
was  derived  the  noun  tun,  our  town  ;  at  first  it  meant  noth- 
ing more  than  an  inclosure,  and  as  such  we  have  already 
seen  it  was  used  in  our  Bible  version,-  where  WicklifFe  sub- 
stitutes it  for  the  word  farm.  More  recently  still  we  have 
had  recourse  to  the  same  root,  when  our  new  railway  wants 
required  the  word  tunnel,  a  diminutive  of  tun,  and  meaning 
an  "  inclosed  way." 


262 


STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 


Before  proceeding  to  the  larger  compound  numerals,  we 
insert  here,  for  purposes  of  comparison,  the  first  ten  numer- 
als in  the  kindred  languages  which  form  the  family  of  our 
English:  — 


Eng. 

Welsh. 

A.  Sax. 

Old  H.  Ger. 

Mod.  Ger. 

GotkU. 

One,  an,  j 

1,    Un, 

An, 

Ein, 

Ein, 

Ain, 

Two, 

Dau, 

Tu,  twa, 

Zuene, 

Zwei, 

Tvai, 

Three, 

Tri,  tair, 

Thry, 

Thri, 

Drei, 

Threis, 

Four, 

Fed  war. 

Feower, 

Fior, 

Tier, 

Fidwor, 

Five, 

Pump, 

Fif, 

Finf, 

Funf, 

Firaf, 

Six, 

Chwech, 

Seox, 

Sehs, 

Sechs, 

Saihs, 

Seven, 

Saith, 

Seofan, 

Sipun, 

Sieben, 

Sibun, 

Eight, 

Wyth, 

Eahta, 

Ahto, 

Acht, 

Ahtau, 

Nine, 

Naw, 

Nigon, 

Niun, 

Neun, 

Niun, 

Ten. 

Deg. 

Tyn,  tig. 

Zehan. 

Zehn, 

Taihun. 

A  similar  correspondence  is  shown  to  exist  throughout  the 
whole  Indo-European  class  of  languages. 

It  is  well  known  that  our  eleven  is  simply  the  an  lif,  one 
left,  of  our  Saxon  fathers,  as  this  was  really  the  case  after 
both  hands  had  been  closed  ;  in  the  same  manner  twelve  is 
the  contracted  form  of  twd  lif,  two  left,  and  these  two  nu- 
merals afford  us  in  their  simpler  form  an  additional  evi- 
dence of  the  duodecimal  method  of  counting,  which  long 
prevailed  among  Scandinavian  and  Old  German  nations. 
Hence  England  has  always  had  a  small  and  a  great  hun- 
dred,—  100  and  120,  —  and  the  original  ton  contains  yet 
2400  lbs.,  in  contrast  with  the  modern  or  small  ton  of  2000 
lbs.  After  twelve  the  numerals  are  simply  compounds  of  ten 
and  the  lower  numbers,  until  we  arrive  at  twenty^  which  con- 
sists of  the  dual  twain,  and  the  old  word  tig,  corresponding 
to  the  root  in  ScVa  and  decern,  and  meaning  ten.  Instead 
of  twenty  we  still  use  frequently  the  old  Celtic  word  score  — 
one  of  tl^  few  true  Celtic  forms  that  have  held  their  own  in 
our  language.  It  is  a  relic  of  the  fondness  the  Celts  had  for 
counting  by  twenties,  which  survives  in  a  very  striking 
manner  in  the  French  substitute  of  Quatre-  Vingt,  four 
twenties,  for  eighty,  soixante-dix  for  seventy,  and  all 
similar  formations.      Our  Bible  has  ^^  fourscore  and  ten  ; " 


HOW  WE  COUNT.  263 

Shakespeare  uses,  in  "  Measure  for  Measure,"  "  ninescore 
and  seventeen  pounds,"  and  Byron  speaks  of  "  six  of  my 
fourscore  years."  The  frequent  use  of  the  verb  to  score, 
for  counting,  arises  probably  from  the  manner  in  which,  in 
the  days  of  Old  England,  archers  called  the  distance  of 
twenty  yards  a  score^  and  thus  counted  up  their  relative 
merits.  In  quarantine  the  substitution  of  a  Latin  term 
for  the  Saxon  forty,  shows  the  danger  we  incur  by  using 
foreign  words  without  adhering  faithfully  to  their  original 
meaning.  In  former  days  the  time  of  trial  for  persons 
coming  from  regions  where  contagious  diseases  prevailed, 
was  forty  days ;  and  this  gave  rise,  in  the  Mediterranean, 
where  this  precaution  against  pestilence  was  most  general, 
to  the  use  of  the  word  quarantaine.  Now  we  have  forgot- 
ten the  true  signification  of  quaranta,  and  speak  ludicrously 
of  a  "  quarantine  of  ten  days."  Hundred  is  a  compound  of 
hund,  which  meant  either  an  exact  number  of  hundred 
already,  or  merely  served  to  designate  a  large,  round  sum  ; 
it  is  the  same  as  the  root  in  TptaKovra  and  centum^  as  we 
may  see  at  a  glance  by  a  comparison  of  the  English  hundred 
in  our  shires,  with  the  Canton  of  the  Swiss  Confederacy. 
To  this  was  added  red^  which  is  simply  our  rod  or  reed,  an 
instrument  universally  used  by  the  Anglo-Saxons  to  mark 
by  notches  cut  in  it  the  number  of  times  they  wished  to 
remember.  It  is  well  known  that  this  custom  is  by  no 
means  extinct,  either  in  Scandinavian  countries,  or  in  the 
northern  parts  of  the  kingdom. 

If  we  have,  in  common  with  all  nations,  made  no  pro- 
gress in  the  formation  of  numerals,  we  have  at  least  learnt 
to  write  them  much  better  than  our  ancestors.  The  oldest 
inscriptions  on  the  marble  of  Italy  or  the  granite  of  Scan- 
dinavia, whether  they  contain  weighty  records  of  early  races 
or  mystic  accounts  of  Northern  gods,  all  unite  in  one  com- 
mon way  of  marking  numbers  simply  by  straight  lines,  such 
as  could  most  easily  be  carved  in  stone  or  cut  in  wood.  It 
was  in  Italy  first  that  the  custom  of  the  Greeks  to  use  their 


264  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

vowfels  for  that  purpose,  obtained  most  largely,  and  as  the 
Greek  v  is  the  Latin  V,  the  Romans  adopted  this,  the  fifth 
vowel,  as  meaning  five,  retaining  for  the  preceding  numbers 
the  ancient  strokes,  I,  II,  III,  and  IIII.  Improving  on  this, 
they  placed  two  Vs  one  over  the  other,  ][,  and  contracting 
the  figure  in  one,  counted  X,  equal  to  ten.  C  as  the  initial 
letter  of  centum^  became  the  sign  for  hundred,  and  as  the 
ancient  Roman  alphabet  was  not  written  in  round  but  in 
square  lines,  the  lower  half  of  the  old-fashioned  C  resem- 
bled the  later  L  sufficiently  to  let  this  letter  stand  for  the 
half  hundred,  or  fifly.  M  became,  as  the  initial  letter  of 
mille,  the  sign  for  a  thousand,  and  D,  it  is  said,  meant  di- 
midium,  or  the  half  of  thousand.  These  signs,  however, 
long  used  for  all  purposes  in  England,  had  in  their  turn 
to  give  way  to  those  which  we  now  employ.  These  have 
been  introduced  through  the  Arabs,  who  themselves  prob- 
ably obtained  them  from  the  eastern  part  of  India.  They 
employed  them  in  their  admirable  researches,  mainly  for 
the  purposes  of  astrology,  and  afterwards  for  arithmetical 
problems.  After  they  had  conquered  Spain,  they  intro- 
duced them,  with  the  many  branches  of  knowledge  which 
Christian  Europe  owes  to  their  faithful  stewardship  of 
the  treasures  of  ancient  lore,  into  the  schools  and  uni- 
versities of  the  Peninsula.  There  it  was  that  Gerbert, 
studying  Theology  and  the  Black  Art  in  the  halls  of  Sala- 
manca, became  acquainted  with  them  in  the  tenth  century, 
and  learnt  to  know  their  value.  He  afterwards  rose  rapidly 
in  the  Church,  and  when  he  bore  at  last  the  triple  crown 
as  Sylvester  II.,  he  introduced,  with  other  fruits  of  his 
learning,  the  use  of  these  Arabic  signs  throughout  Christen- 
dom. They  are  found  earliest  in  Astronomical  Tables,  then 
merchants  discovered  their  great  usefulness  ;  from  1300  we 
meet  with  them  in  inscriptions,  but  not  before  1400  in 
manuscripts.  How  slowly  they  must  have  made  their  way 
into  popular  use  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  a  horn- 
book, at  least  as  old  as  1570,  and  like  all  books  of  the  kind, 


ARTICLES.  265 

intended  for  the  humbler  classes,  concludes  with  the  Lord's 
Prayer  and  the  Roman  numerals,  the  Arabic  numerals  being 
omitted. 

As  one  of  the  pronouns  is  used  as  definite  article  in 
English,  and  one  of  the  numerals  as  indefinite  article,  it 
may  not  be  amiss  to  add  here  a  few  remarks  concerning  the 
history  and  nature  of  that  mysterious  class  of  words,  the 
articles.  They  belong  so  exclusively  to  modern  languages, 
and  throw  so  much  light  upon  the  transition  of  those  de- 
rived from  ancient  idioms,  that  they  have  ever  been  a  favor- 
ite topic  with  linguists,  without  being,  on  that  account, 
any  more  satisfactorily  explained  than  other  subjects  of 
philologic  controversy.  This  only  is  universally  admitted  — 
that  they  have  taken  the  place  and  perform,  in  part  at  least, 
the  duty  of  the  elaborate  system  of  inflections  in  Greek  and 
Latin.  It  is  well  known  that  the  former  possessed  only  a 
so-called  definite  article,  o,  rj,  ro,  whilst  of  an  indefinite 
article  no  other  trace  is  found  but  the  equivocal  rts,  made 
enclitic.  The  Latin  had  really  no  article  at  all.  Both 
these  languages,  however,  had  a  very  complete  system  of 
inflections  for  nouns,  in  their  numerous  declensions,  most 
of  which  consisted  in  the  addition  of  pronouns,  by  means 
of  connecting  vowels,  to  the  end  of  the  root.  Thus  av-qp 
became  avhp6<:^  and  homo  became  hominis.  In  the  Romance 
languages  these  varied  terminations  were  lost  at  the  time 
of  the  conquest  of  Rome  and  Roman  colonies  under  the 
influence  of  causes  identical  with  those  which  produced  a 
similar  loss  of  Anglo-Saxon  inflections  afler  the  Norman 
conquest  of  England.  The  German  tribes  who  made  them- 
selves masters  of  Gaul,  Spain,  and  Italy,  would  not  and 
could  not  learn  these  nice  distinctions  of  sound,  and  curtly 
abandoned  them.  As  soon,  however,  as  new  languages  be- 
gan to  be  formed  out  of  the  surviving  Latin  elements,  and 
the  German  idioms  that  were  mixed  up  with  them,  the 
necessity  for  such  inflections  became  apparent  once  more, 
and  was  felt  by  all.  Following,  then,  the  example  set  already 


266  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

by  later  Roman  authors,  certain  words  suggestive  of  the 
same  ideas  formerly  represented  by  declensions,  &c.,  were 
chosen  and  used ;  but  instead  of  being  added  at  the  end  of 
words  which  had  generally  lost  their  original  termination, 
and  with  it  their  vitality,  these  words  were  placed  before  the 
noun  and  hence  called  prepositions.  All  the  Romance  lan- 
guages followed  the  same  plan  of  choosing  for  this  purpose 
the  demonstrative  pronoun  ille,  which  gave  the  French  le 
and  la,  the  Italian  ^7,  Zo,  and  /a,  and  the  Spanish  eZ,  la,  lo,  and 
the  numeral  unus,  which  gave  a  similar  form  to  the  daugh- 
ters of  Latin.  The  same  causes  led  to  precisely  the  same 
results  in  English,  also.  The  Anglo-Saxon  had,  like  the 
Latin,  a  large  number  of  inflections  for  its  nouns,  which  the 
Danish  and  the  Norman  conquerors  alike  rejected.  As  Old 
English  arose,  the  old  demonstrative  pronoun  se,  seo,  thaet, 
was  chosen  naturally  to  act  as  a  definite  article,  having  been 
used  already  in  Anglo-Saxon  very  generally  for  that  pur- 
pose. In  Semi-Saxon  it  had  lost  almost  all  of  its  forms 
except  thaet,  the  remaining  cases  being  used  but  rarely,  and 
the  declension  having  become  less  distinct.  It  appeared, 
therefore,  very  early  in  Old  English  as  the,  of  all  genders, 
though  with  different  case  endings,  and  only  in  middle  Eng- 
lish became  absolutely  of  all  cases  and  genders.  Thus  we 
have  obtained  our  article  the.  In  like  manner  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  numeral  an  was  employed  with  the  meaning  of  an 
indefinite  article  branching  off  from  the  fuller  form  one,  as 
has  been  shown  above.  The  first  instance  of  its  use  in  this 
aspect  occurs  in  "  Layamon's  Brut,"  but  it  does  not  seem  to 
have  come  into  general  use  until  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth 
century.  Before  that  time  the  indefinite  article  was  gener- 
ally expressed  by  the  use  of  sutn,  our  some,  or,  as  in  the 
ancient  languages,  by  the  omission  of  any  designation. 

The  rare  and  judicious  use  of  the  article  in  English  is 
one  of  the  points  in  which  its  beautiful  simplicity  is  best 
shown.  In  its  proper  omission,  especially,  whenever  the 
sense  of  the  noun  is  not  limited  or  determined,  lies  an  ex- 


ARTICLES.  267 

cellence  of  English  even  over  Greek,  where  it  is  often  used 
without  giving  additional  weight  or  conferring  a  clearer 
meaning  to  the  noun  which  it  accompanies.  This  beauty 
becomes  more  striking  yet,  when  we  compare  with  it  the 
use  which  the  nearest  relative  of  English,  the  German, 
makes  of  the  article.  Its  almost  insufferable  repetition  there 
mars  often  the  most  beautiful  periods,  encumbering  them 
sadly,  and  thus  depriving  the  language  of  the  brief  and 
impressive  energy  of  her  English  sister.  Few  are  aware 
under  what  curious  disguises  the  article  occasionally 
makes  its  appearances  in  English.  There  are  large  num- 
bers of  foreign  words  which  presented  themselves  at  the 
time  of  their  introduction,  accompanied  by  their  article ; 
the  hospitable  Englishman  adopted  them  without  inquiring 
what  was  their  substance  and  what  their  shadow,  and  thus 
we  have  virtually  nouns  possessed  of  their  own  article, 
and  yet  preceded  by  the  English  article.  In  other  words, 
again,  we  have  imagined  an  initial  a  to  be  the  article, 
and  thus  deprived  them  of  part  of  their  substance,  in 
making  them  English.  This  has  been,  e.  g.^  the  case  with 
the  Malay  word  amuco,  designating  the  peculiar  intoxication 
from  rage  and  other  sources  for  which  the  natives  of  those 
regions  are  remarkable  ;  we  have  fancied  the  word  to  con- 
sist of  two  parts,  and  although  the  phrase  was  at  first  cor- 
rectly spelled  " to  run  amock"  we  now  call  it  erroneously 
" to  run  a  much"  The  same  process  takes  place  continu- 
ally in  other  languages  as  well  as  in  our  own.  The  French 
have  taken  the  Latin  hedera,  and  called  it,  for  years,  hierre^ 
as  it  is  still  written  in  Ronsard  Vhierre,  whilst  since  the  days 
of  that  poet  it  has  become  Uerre,  and  now  takes  an  addi- 
tional le  before  it.  The  same  origin  have  la  luette,  le  loriot, 
le  loutre,  and  la  lonze,  whilst  Pen  demain  has  become  le  lende- 
main^  and  Apulia  has  degenerated  into  la  Pouille. 

In  the  majority  of  similar  cases  in  English,  we  can  plead 
our  pardonable  ignorance  of  foreign  forms  at  the  time  that 
the  latter  were  introduced  into  England.     This  is  a  suffi- 


268  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

cient'  plea,  for  instance,  for  the  double  article  we  employ 
with  Arabic  words,  which  contain  already  the  Arabic  article 
al,  as  in  Algebra,  (al  Geber,)  alcohol,  almanac,  alcali,  elixir, 
(al  Aksir,)  alchymy,  alcove,  admiral,  (from  almirante,)  alem- 
bic, and  azimuth.  Even  the  Spanish,  through  which  we  have 
obtained  these  Eastern  terms,  had  already  made  a  similar 
mistake  in  many  instances,  and  we  only  follow  the  example 
it  has  set  us,  when  we  now  speak  of  a  lily,  instead  of  the 
Arabic  alelt,  from  Xeipiov,  or  of  a  fan  from  old  aban,  which 
is  still  used  in  the  diminutive  form  abanico.  Our  saffron 
comes  to  us  likewise  from  azafran,  and  azure  from  the  Per- 
sian lazur,  which  we  meet  with  again  in  a  slightly  altered 
form  in  lapis  lazuli.  It  is  curious  to  observe  how  the  Ital- 
ian arancia  has  given  us  the  correct  orange,  whilst  the  Span- 
iards have  been  misled  by  the  indefinite  article  before  it, 
and  now  speak  of  an  orange  as  of  una  naranja,  repeating  it 
a  second  time.  Our  word  alligator  has  a  somewhat  similar 
origin.  It  comes  originally  from  the  Latin  lacerta,  a  lizard, 
in  Spanish,  el  lagarto  ;  hence  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  writes  of 
a  certain  newly  discovered  land :  "  But  for  lagartos  it  ex- 
ceeded." In  Ben  Jonson  we  find  the  contraction  with  the 
article  already  established,  as  he  calls  the  creature  an 
cdigarta,  and  when  English  sailors  landed  in  America  and 
saw  there  for  the  first  time  the  crocodile  of  that  Continent, 
they  called  it  very  naturally  a  great  lizard,  an  alligator. 
We  ought  not  to  forget,  finally,  that  the  name  of  Spain 
itself  has  undergone  a  change  of  the  same  kind  before  it 
assumed  its  present  English  garb.  It  was  first,  of  course, 
Hispania,  whence  its  name  in  the  vernacular  of  Espana, 
This,  however,  was  constantly  misspelt,  until,  finally,  the 
orthography,  imitating  the  pronunciation,  settled  somewhat 
into  Espayne.  Its  frequent  connection  with  the  preposition 
de,  makes  it  appear  in  numerous  MSS.  first  as  d^Espayne, 
and  then  as  de  Spayne,  under  the  misapprehension  that  the 
letter  e  belonged  to  the  preposition,  and  thus  it  gradually 
shaped  itself  into  simple  Spain. 


ARTICLElii^i|PQH,l|       269 

The  same  plea  of  ignorance  applies  to  mistakes  made  in 
French  words  only  when  their  adoption  can  be  traced  to 
the  days  of  great  national  trouble  and  profound  ignorance. 
This  is,  however,  generally  the  case ;  French  was  spoken 
only  by  the  higher  classes,  and  by  them,  even,  without  great 
correctness ;  the  spelling  was  almost  arbitrary,  and  we  need 
not  wonder,  therefore,  that  the  good  people  made  free  with 
these  foreign  terms,  which  for  generations  presented  to  them 
no  very  clear  meaning.  The  indistinct  pronunciation  of 
English  vowels  contributed  still  farther  to  dim  their  per- 
ception, and  hence  almost  any  a  or  e  at  the  beginning  of  a 
French  word  was  liable  to  be  mistaken  for  an  English 
article.  It  is  thus  that  avant  gave  us  our  van,  esprit  our 
sprite,  and  esdandre  the  double  form  of  scandal  and  slander. 
The  enlumineur,  who  brought  his  craft  from  France  and 
adorned  missals  and  romances  with  his  quaint  art,  be- 
came in  England  famous  as  a  limner ;  the  etincelle  dwindled 
into  a  tinsel,  etiquette  into  a  ticket,  and  exemplaire,  a  sam- 
pler. Among  the  curious  plants  brought  back  by  the 
Crusaders  from  the  Orient,  was  also  the  bulb  that  takes  its 
name  from  Ascalon,  and  was  naturalized  in  France  as  echa- 
lote  ;  we  again  took  the  e  to  be  an  <x,  and  call  it  now  a  sha- 
lot,  very  much  like  the  echine  of  beef  and  pork,  which  is 
now  a  chine.  The  skillful  escrimer  of  the  French  was  mis- 
understood in  the  same  manner,  and,  long  before  we  de- 
rived from  it  both  skirmish  and  scrimmage,  Laertes  said  to 
Hamlet's  king,  — 

"  the  scrimers  of  their  nation 
He  swore,  had  neither  motion,  guard  nor  eye, 
If  you  oppos'd  them."  —  Hamlet,  IV.  7. 

The  few  cases  in  which  we  have  added  the  French  prepo- 
sitioji  de  to  our  English  word  are  easily  understood,  though 
the  nature  of  the  change  is  not  always  perceived  at  first 
sight.  When  Homer  speaks  of  wandering  kut  dacfioSeXov 
Xet/xtova,  we  see  it  translated  "  thro'  flowery  meads  of  aspo- 
del;"  in  the  mean  time,  however,  thejleur  cT  affodille  had 


270  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

become  fashionable,  and  we  see  the  correct  spelling  changed 
into  daffodil.  Thus  it  happened  with  the  name  of  Ypres, 
that  busy  town  from  which  in  the  times  of  the  Plantagenets 
table-cloths  were  brought  to  England  which  cost  as  much 
as  whole  coats  of  mail,  and  which  became  more  famous  still 
when  the  great  Wolsey  was  made  bishop  of  its  see ;  the 
English  ear  became  familiar  with  the  word  cT  Ypres,  and, 
unassisted  by  the  eye,  changed  it  soon  after  into  the  modern 
diaper.  The  common  people  to  this  day  make  free  with 
the  article,  especially  in  words  of  foreign  origin  ;  a  num- 
herella  is  heard  often  enough,  and  an  atomy,  substituted  for 
a  skeleton,  has  only  recently  given  way  to  a  better  knowl- 
edge of  the  difference  between  the  art  itself  and  its  object. 
If  the  cockney  still  persists  in  saying  a  pottecary,  so  he 
do  not  change  it  into  potcarrier,  he  can  plead  the  possible 
derivation  not  from  aTroOrJKr],  but  from  the  Italian  hottega^ 
for  which  origin  the  name  of  Pottinger  seems  to  speak. 

Even  the  fuller  form  of  the  indefinite  article  an,  has  not 
escaped  this  tendency  to  absorption.  In  the  "  Comedy 
of  Errors "  ( III.  2),  there  is  a  curious  illustration  of 
the  manner  in  which  this  contraction  took  place.  Ellen's 
name  being  demanded,  the  answer  is,  "  Nell,  Sir,  but  her 
name  and  three-quarters,  that  is,  an  ell  and  three-quarters.** 
The  same  process  has  produced  Ned  from  Edward,  and 
Nan,  or  Nanny,  from  Ann.  The  oldest  word  of  the  kind 
is  probably  nag,  which  represents  the  Old  Danish  word  an 
6g,  for  which  in  Old  Saxon  ehu  (equus)  was  substituted. 
Nale  was  once  very  common  for  an  ale,  meaning  an  ale- 
house, and  may  be  found  in  the  "  Friar's  Tale  "  — 

"  They  were  inly  glad  to  fill  his  purse 
And  maken  him  gret  festes  at  the  nale.*^ 

Nuncle,  also,  is  frequent  in  Shakespeare,  though  it  repre- 
sents, more  probably,  mine  uncle.     Thus  in  "  King  Lear,'* 

(1.4),- 

"  Mark  it,  Nuncle, 
Have  more  than  thou  showest," 


ARTICLES.  271 

to  which  may  be  added  the  good  naunt  of  "  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher"  (I.  606).  Mandeville  calls  our  modern  eft  cor- 
rectly enough  an  ewte,  but  both  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare 
substitute  for  it  newtj  which  was,  no  doubt,  the  common 
form  in  their  day.  The  Old  English  phrase, /or  than  anes 
(for  then  once)  is  now /or  the  nonce.  In  a  few  other  cases 
the  word  has  lost  an  initial  n,  that  being  mistaken  for  a 
part  of  the  article.  The  Anglo-Saxon  naugar  has  thus 
changed  into  an  augur,  and  the  naeddere,  which  our  fore- 
fathers probably  derived  from  Latin  natrix,  is  now  an 
adder.  The  Germans  have  preserved  the  original  word  in 
their  natter,  as  even  in  Derbyshire  a  nedder  is  still  com- 
monly used  for  a  snake.  Chaucer  says  still  "  Like  to  the 
nadder"  but  his  contemporaries  have  already  eddere  in- 
stead. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


LIVING  WORDS. 


«•  It  will  be  proTcd  to  thy  fece  that  thou  hast  men  about  thee  that  usually  talk 
of  a  noun  and  a  verb  and  such  abominable  words  as  no  Christian  ear  can  endure  to 
hear." — Jack  Cade's  Charge  against  the  Lord  Say. 

It  is  a  quaint  saying  of  that  quaint  and  yet  wise  people, 
the  Chinese,  that  verbs  alone  are  living  words  ;  they  call 
nouns  dead  words,  and  all  other  parts  of  speech  but  aux- 
iliaries. They  show  here,  as  in  almost  every  branch  of 
science  and  letters,  the  acute  and  clear  perception  of  truth, 
which,  however,  like  a  golden  grain  of  corn,  is  by  them 
safely  stored  away  and  there  remains  useless,  while  other 
nations  have  trustingly  confided  it  to  the  bosom  of  their 
mother  earth  and  thus  reaped  abundant  and  unceasing  har- 
vests. Western  races,  also,  felt  the  same  vitality  in  the 
verb,  though  less  clearly  and  tangibly,  and  sought  to  give 
expression  to  it  by  the  honorable  name  they  bestowed 
upon  this  all-important  part  of  speech.  Thus  it  was  to 
the  ancient  Greeks  emphatically  to  prj/xa,  and  when  they 
referred  to  it  in  connection  with  its  mental  purpose  in 
speech,  they  spoke  of  it  as  rd  ifjuf/v^oTara  tov  Xoyov,  the 
one  animating  power  of  the  sentence,  its  vital  principle, 
without  which  a  sentence  can  have  no  satisfactory  meaning. 
In  English  we  have  adopted  here  also,  as  in  other  gram- 
matical definitions,  the  Latin  expression  verbum,  the  word 
by  eminence.  But  whilst  we  feel  and  thus  vaguely  express 
the  superior  importance  of  the  verb,  we  have  by  no  means 
yet  agreed  as  to  its  precise  nature.  On  the  contrary,  the 
apparently  simple  question,  "  What  is  the  Verb  ?  "  has  been. 


LIVING  WORDS.  273 

from  of  old,  the  subject  "  of  the  most  ferocious  controver- 
sies," as  the  witty  philologist,  Home  Tooke,  expresses  it 
He  has  not  himself  escaped  the  temptation  held  out  by  that 
subtle  part  of  speech,  and  much  time  and  great  violence 
is  bestowed  upon  it  in  his  admirable  "  Diversions."  This 
only  seems  to  be  established  beyond  any  controversy,  that 
nouns  and  verbs  are  the  two  essential  and  indispensable 
parts  of  speech.  We  can  do  without  all  others,  we  cannot 
do  without  these  two.  The  noun  has,  in  point  of  time,  the 
precedence,  for  we  know  that  the  first  use  made  by  man  of 
his  new  power  of  language  was  to  give  names  to  the  objects 
around  him.  These  names  were  nouns.  Then  only,  as  he 
saw  these  objects  move  and  act,  as  he  perceived  their  form, 
their  color,  and  other  qualities,  he  began,  secondly,  to  as- 
cribe something  to  them,  and  his  effort  to  give  a  name  to 
this  was  the  verb.  Hence,  in  order  to  convey  an  idea, 
there  must  at  least  be  given  the  name  of  a  thing  and  an 
expression  of  our  sentiments  concerning  it ;  these  two  suffice 
to  make  a  sentence  sufficient  for  the  intercourse  between 
man  and  man.  But  in  proportion  as  what  we  think  of 
an  object  is  necessarily  of  far  more  interest  and  impor^ 
tance  than  its  mere  name,  by  so  much  is  the  verb  also  more 
important  than  the  noun,  and  hence  the  original  compari- 
son of  the  noun  to  the  body  of  man  and  of  the  verb  to  his 
soul. 

Another  effect  of  this  peculiar  relation  between  the  two 
parts  of  speech  is  that  the  priority  in  time  enjoyed,  beyond 
any  doubt,  by  the  noun,  has  led  to  the  opinion,  entertained 
by  many  philologists,  that  it  is  the  only  really  original  part 
of  speech,  from  which  all  others  have  been  subsequently 
derived.  It  cannot  be  denied  that,  even  in  the  best  devel- 
oped languages,  the  distinction  between  noun  and  verb  is 
not  yet  absolute  and  at  an  end,  as  it  is  well  known  that  in 
English,  for  instance,  a  large  proportion  of  the  verbs,  about 
4300  in  all,  are  still,  in  outward  appearance  at  least,  simple 
nouns,  and  show  their  different  meaning  only  by  their 
18 


274  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

place  in  the  sentence.  It  was  the  same  in  ancient  lan- 
guages, which  we  are  so  apt  to  consider  as  entirely  differ- 
ent from  our  own.  There,  also,  in  numerous  cases,  the 
root  of  a  verb  was  a  noun ;  to  this  was  added,  generally  by 
means  of  a  connecting  vowel,  the  oblique  case  of  a  pro- 
noun, as  in  ypa<f>-o-fi€u  (fte)  and  pet-i-mus  (nos).  The 
root  conveyed  no  idea  of  action  or  motion,  neither  of  which 
was,  or  now  is,  inherent  in  the  verb ;  the  active  power 
rested  solely  in  the  person  or  the  agent ;  if  we  take  this 
away,  the  Greek  or  Latin  verb  returns  at  once  to  the  sim- 
ple form  of  a  noun.  Thus  it  was  in  Anglo-Saxon  also,  but 
after  a  while,  and  especially  under  the  influence  of  the  Nor- 
man Conquest,  the  full  force  of  the  personal  pronoun,  so 
constantly  added  to  the  root,  was  no  longer  felt.  It  be- 
came necessary  to  give  a  new  form  to  the  verbal  char- 
acter of  the  root,  but  as  in  the  noun,  the  inflection  was 
no  longer  added  at  the  end,  but  placed  before  it  in  the 
shape  of  pronoun  and  preposition.  So  in  the  verb,  also, 
modern  idioms  place  the  pronoun  before  it  and  leave  the 
words  disconnected.  Anglo-Saxon  nouns  now  serve,  there- 
fore, as  verbs  without  any  change  of  form,  and  we  use  thus 
words  like  love,  hate,  fear,  dream,  sleep,  and  book.  Norman- 
French  nouns  are  not  so  indiscriminately  fit  for  verbal  use  ; 
still  we  have  motion,  place,  notice,  minister,  pain,  place,  and 
question  as  nouns  and  as  verbs.  The  tendency  is  to  add  to 
this  class,  and  among  more  recent  forms  may  be  mentioned 
station,  post,  provision,  and  preface.  Many  occur  now  and 
then  only  to  resume  their  allegiance.  Milton  says  "  to  syl- 
lable men's  names ; "  but  of  all  authors  Shakespeare  uses  the 
most  unbounded  liberty  in  this  respect.  He  says,  "  This 
(calamity)  periods  his  comfort;"  "Come,  sermon  me  no 
farther,"  and  Portia,  Cato's  daughter,  exclaims  , — 

"  Think  you  I  am  no  stronger  than  my  sex, 
Being  ao  fathered  and  so  husbanded!  " 

This  power  of  turning  almost  any  noun  into  a  verb  has 
been  called  the  most  kin^y  prerogative  of  the  English  Ian- 


LIVING  WORDS.  275 

guage,  and  compared  to  the  right  of  ennobling  exercised 
by  the  Crown.  For  just  because  most  English  verbs  of 
purely  English  descent  are  still  in  their  simplest  form,  so 
as  not  to  be  distinguished  from  nouns,  they  bring  up  at 
once  the  full  form  and  power  of  the  object  itself,  from 
which  the  action  is  derived.  The  effect  is  still  greater 
when  the  act,  or  the  process  itself,  is  to  be  suggested  as  a 
concreted  thing  or  in  a  picture.  This  direct  and  undis- 
guised descent  gives  our  verbs,  mainly,  the  peculiar  vigor 
and  liveliness  for  which  they  are  distinguished,  and  which 
is  not  a  little  increased  by  their  simplicity,  as  contrasted  with 
the  more  ornate,  but  also  less  transparent,  verbs  of  other 
languages.  How  powerful  is  the  effect  which  the  idea 
of  man  produces  when  we  speak  of  "  manning  a  vessel ;  " 
how  strong  and  suggestive  is  our  language  when  it  expresses 
efforts  to  "  arm  a  fortress  "  or  to  "  hridle  our  passions." 

There  must,  of  course,  be  a  limit  to  this  abundant  use  of 
nouns  as  verbs  in  the  very  nature  of  their  meaning ;  and 
the  tendency  of  our  time  to  increase  the  stock  almost  at 
random,  can  hardly  be  called  an  improvement  of  the  lan- 
guage. Lovers  of  liberty,  it  is  true,  see  in  this  promiscuous 
use  of  nouns  and  verbs  but  an  effect  of  the  general  equaliz- 
ing tendency  of  our  age.  Macaulay  is  occasionally  bold  in 
impressing  new  words,  as  when  he  says,  "  The  bark  of  a 
shepherd's  dog  or  the  hleat  of  a  lamb,"  where,  heretofore, 
harking  and  bleating  would  have  been  used.  New  addi- 
tions of  the  same  class  are,  to  bag,  to  father,  to  air,  to  ex- 
perience, and  to  bayonet,  and  the  most  recent  coinage  now 
accepted  is,  perhaps,  "  to  progressJ^  By  the  side  of  these 
innovations,  there  appears  no  reason  why  we  should  not 
still  speak  of  the  "  childing  of  a  woman,"  or  adopt  Sylves- 
ter's substitute  for  deifying,  in  "  some  godding  fortune,  idol 
of  ambition." 

The  free  use  made  in  English  of  proper  names  for  ver- 
bal purposes  is  not  original  to  our  language,  but  was  al- 
ready well  known  in  antiquity.     Thus,  when  Demosthenes 


276  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

heard  that  King  Philip  of  Macedon  had  bribed  the  oracle, 
in  order  to  dispirit  the  Athenians,  he  used  the  word  <jnXnr' 
TTi^tiv,  when  he  meant  to  accuse  the  priestess  of  favor- 
ing Philip.  In  later  days  Antoninus  (VI.  30)  gave  the 
warning  ixrj  aTroKataapoyOfj^,  from  the  foreign  name  Caesar. 
The  Romans  themselves  were  familiar  with  the  process,  and 
spoke  of  Syllatiirtre,  when  one  meditated  to  act  the  part 
of  Sylla,  and  of  GrcBcari,  when  men  played  the  Greek  in 
fine  living  and  free  potations.  With  us  the  use,  or  rather 
the  abuse,  is  so  general  as  hardly  to  require  any  explana- 
tion. Few  think  of  Virgil's  Tantalus  when  they  speak 
of  tantalizing.  Hamlet's  "  it  out-HerocTs  Herod  "  is  famil- 
iar to  all,  and  so  is  "  Noah's  deluge  out-deluged.'*  The 
facetious  Fuller,  in  his  "Church  History"  (viii.  21),  in 
speaking  of  Morgan,  the  sanguinary  bishop  of  Queen  Mary, 
says  of  him  that  he  "  ont- Bannered  even  Bonner  himself," 
and  in  the  time  of  William  III.  the  writer  of  a  pamphlet, 
which  produced  a  great  sensation,  expressed  his  wonder 
that  the  people  had  not,  when  Tourville  was  riding  vic- 
torious in  the  channel,  De  Witted  the  nonjuring  prelates. 
In  the  same  manner  the  "  Tatler  "  says,  "  You  look  as  if 
you  were  Don  Diego'd  to  the  tune  of  a  thousand  pounds." 
The  Trojan  Pandarus  has  left  us  the  verb  to  pander,  and 
we  still  say  of  a  blustering,  turbulent  man  that  he  hectors, 
or  that  he  is  a  hectoring  fellow. 

Nor  are  modern  authors  less  given  to  the  formation  of 
such  verbs.  Scott  speaks  in  Waverley  of  a  person  who 
"  captained  and  Buttler'd  him."  Southey  mentions  sirring 
and  7wac?amm^,  and  even  the  polished  style  of  the.  author 
of  "  What  Will  He  Do  With  It,"  condescends  to  a  de- 
Isaacised  Sir  Isaac. 

Among  Americanisms  of  the  kind  we  have  heard  more 
than  is  complimentary  to  the  Republic  of  the  process  of 
lynching,  said  to  be  derived  from  an  actually  existing  Judge 
Lynch.  The  origin  of  levanting,  or  escaping  from  trouble- 
some creditors  by  a  trip  to  the  East,  and  oi  japanning  cer- 


LIVING  WORDS.  277 

tain  articles,  is  clearly  due  to  the  Levant  and  to  Japan. 
Modern  additions  to  this  class  of  verbs  are,  however,  gener- 
ally made  after  the  manner  of  the  Greek,  by  means  of  the 
syllable  -ize,  which  generally  indicates  repetition,  as  in  civil- 
izing, philosophizing,  and  hellenizing  ;  the  older  tantalize  is 
imitated  by  the  more  recent  galvanizing,  mesmerizing,  and 
macadamizing. 

A  tolerably  large  class  of  verbs  of  this  kind  is  made  from 
the  proper  names  not  of  men  but  of  animals ;  they  are  very 
expressive,  though  often  their  constant  use  has  made  them 
so  familiar  to  us  that  we  hardly  remember  the  associa- 
tion between  their  present  meaning  and  the  animal  from 
which  they  are  derived.  But  even  where  the  sugges- 
tion is  no  longer  so  clearly  marked,  we  are  apt  to  feel 
instinctively  the  original  idea,  and  thus  these  verbs  lend  no 
small  force  and  beauty  to  our  language.  The  ancients 
were  not  without  this  valuable  class  of  words,  and  some  of 
their  formations  have  come  down  to  us,  as  when  Horace 
says  already  similem  ludere  caprecB,  and  we  still  speak  of 
children  who  caper  about,  conveying  the  idea  that  they  are 
frolicsome  like  kids.  To  ape  another  is  a  very  common 
expression,  and  the  dog  has  furnished  Shakespeare  his  — 

"  I  have  dogged  him  like  a  murderer." 
To  rat  is,  perhaps,  rather  technical,  taken  probably  from 
the  presumed  sagacity  of  rats  when  they  leave  a  falling 
house  or  a  sinking  ship  ;  but  to  ferret  out  a  secret  is  only 
too  common  and  belongs  not,  like  ratting,  to  one  sex  only. 

It  is  strange,  and  one  of  those  mysteries  of  language 
which  have  so  far  defied  all  investigation,  that  the  num- 
ber of  such  verbs  derived  from  quadrupeds  should  be  so 
small,  whilst  birds  and  their  habits  have  furnished  many 
more.  We  speak  of  young  people  going  out  a-larking, 
when  they  are  very  apt  to  become  ravenowsly  hungry,  and 
in  their  cups,  at  least,  unhandsomely  to  crow  over  a  fallen 
enemy,  as  the  cock  sings  his  chant  of  victory  on  his 
dung-heap.     The  fickleness  of  man's  estimate  of  the  other 


278  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

sex,  or,  perhaps,  rather  his  just  estimate  of  woman's  high 
qualities  in  contrast  with  her  foibles,  is  shown  in  the 
frequency  with  which  he  speaks  of  her  as  "  a  duck  of  a 
woman,"  and  yet  is  still  ready  to  duck  a  common  scold  in 
a  village-pond.  When  we  hear  that  a  man  has  quailed 
in  the  face  of  danger,  we  are  forcibly  reminded  of  the  words 
of  an  old  song  in  "Relig.  Antiquities,"  p.  69,  "And  thou 
shalt  make  him  cowche  as  doth  a  quailed  The  old  form 
of  the  hawk's  name  has  given  rise  to  the  use  of  the  word 
havoc  as  a  verb  by  itself,  instead  of  the  older  form  "  to  do 
havoc,"  which  is  sanctioned  by  both  Spenser  and  Milton. 
The  hawk  must  have  been  one  of  the  most  common  birds 
in  England  from  olden  times,  for  we  find  that  his  habits, 
evidently  familiar  to  all,  have  left  many  strong  marks  upon 
our  language.  Its  untiring  flight  to  and  fro  seems  especially 
to  have  been  watched  with  eager  interest,  and  gave,  proba- 
bly, first  its  name  to  the  wandering  occupation  of  the  petty 
dealer  who,  like  the  bird,  went  from  house  to  house,  buying 
then  as  he  now  sells,  and  hawking  his  goods  all  over  the 
country.  He  became  the  hawker,  whilst  his  female  com- 
panion, or  rival,  was  in  Anglo-Saxon  times  a  hawkestere, 
and  survives  even  now  in  the  modern  huckster.  Another 
allusion  to  the  bird's  restless  flying  about  may  be  found  in 
the  game  of  which  Halliwell  says :  "  How  much  running  to 
and  fro,  running  forwards,  running  backwards,  in  the  noble 
game  of  hockey."  Its  old  name  was  hawkey.  It  ought  to 
be  mentioned,  however,  that  others  derive  the  verb  to  hawk 
from  the  German  verb  hocken,  to  offer  for  sale. 

Even  the  smaller  fry  of  animal  life  is  not  without  its  use- 
fulness for  our  language.  To  worm  one's  way  into  the  con- 
fidence of  another,  or  to  worm  his  secrets  out,  is  a  pictu- 
resque expression  derived  from  the  old  usage  of  employing 
worm  for  all  that  creeps,  and  thus,  also,  for  snake.  The 
custom  survives  yet  in  the  familiar  word  Uindworm,  and 
the  disgust  which  is  conveyed  by  the  name  of  a  sneak,  or  a 
sneaking  fellow.    We  rise  somewhat  higher  when  we  call  a 


LIVING  WORDS.  279 

friend  a  gad-about,  and  gadding  recalls  to  us  the  swift  mo- 
tions of  a  fly,  suggesting  thus  most  forcibly  the  ready  flit- 
ting of  a  woman  from  house  to  house,  not  omitting,  even, 
the  little  bite  that  is  often  left  behind,  and  may  prove  more 
poisonous  than  we  thought. 

Besides  nouns,  few  other  parts  of  speech  serve  to  form 
verbs.  Now  and  then  we  meet  with  adjectives  which  are 
used  as  such,  sometimes  directly  and  without  any  change, 
as,  to  idle,  to  warm,  and  to  ojpen,  at  other  times  with  the 
addition  of  a  derivative  syllable,  as,  to  whiten,  to  blacken,  to 
brighten,  and  to  lighten. 

Adverbs  and  mere  particles,  finally,  occur  occasionally 
used  without  any  change,  as  verbs.  This  is  especially  the 
case  in  modern  authors,  among  whom  Dickens  makes  the 
freest  use  of  this  class  of  words.  To  them  we  owe  expres- 
sions such  as,  to  over,  to  forward,  and  to  even,  though  already 
Shakespeare  had  (''  Macbeth"  III.  6),— 

"  The  cloudy  messenger  turns  me  his  back 
And  hums,  as  who  should  say,  You'll  rue  the  time 
That  clogs  me  with  this  answer." 

The  number  of  verbs  obtained  by  means  of  a  change  of 
form  is  much  larger,  and  the  process  of  thus  making  new 
verbs  has  been  going  on  actively  ever  since  the  first  exist- 
ence of  English,  without  being  abandoned  even  in  our 
day.  The  most  popular  change  is  simply  the  addition  of 
-en  to  the  root,  nor  are  these  letters  merely  accidental  or 
arbitrarily  chosen  —  nothing  in  language  is  accidental,  as 
little  as  in  nature.  They  are,  on  the  contrary,  the  result 
of  the  three  so-called  primitive  verbs  which,  in  the  very 
first  stage  of  the  existence  of  our  language,  were  added  to 
nouns  in  order  thus  to  connect  their  own  meaning  with  that 
of  the  root. 

The  simplest  of  the  three  was  an,  which  seems  to  have 
had  the  vague,  general  meaning  of  adding,  and  often  was 
doubled  into  anan.  Its  present  participle  and  still  sur- 
vives in  modern  English,  and  when  we  say  "  father  and 


280  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

child  "  we  still  mean  nothing  more  than  "  the  father,  add- 
ing the  child."  There  was  another  form  of  this  prim- 
itive word  anciently  in  use,  viz.,  ge-anan^  which  meant  to 
add  and  to  produce  ;  this  has  given  us  our  modern  verb  to 
yean,  though  we  limit  its  use  to  cattle  and  mainly  to  sheep, 
and  hence  call  a  young  lamb  also  a  yeanling. 

A  fuller  form  is  gan,  which  conveyed  the  general  idea  of 
motion,  as  an  did  that  of  addition.  It  has  given  us  directly 
our  word  go^  whilst  the  frequent  double  form,  gangan,  sur- 
vives yet  in  a  variety  of  forms.  It  gave  life  to  the  Scotch 
term  to  gang,  for  our  to  go,  and  to  a  noun  of  our  own, 
when  we  speak  of  a  gang  of  robbers,  because  they  go  to- 
gether.    Ben  Jonson  had,  — 

"  And  thence  can  see  gang  in  and  out  mjf  neat." 
The   diminutive  gangrel  is  used,  at  least  provincially,  for 
a  vagabond,  and  the  nautical  term  gangway  has  its  name 
from  being  the  place  through  which  people  go  to  and  from 
a  vessel. 

Agan,  finally,  as  it  has  a  fuller  form  than  an  and  gan, 
also  represents  a  higher  idea,  that  of  property.  The  latest 
use  made  of  the  old  verb  may  probably  be  found  in  the 
famous  proclamation  of  Henry  III.,  made  to  the  people  of 
Huntingdonshire  in  1258,  where  this  sentence  occurs :  "  The 
treowde  thaet  heo  us  ogenJ*  Soon  afterwards  the  word  was 
contracted,  thanks  to  the  soft  pronunciation  of  the  letter  g, 
until  it  assumed  the  present  form  of  own.  Our  modern 
English  mixes  up  in  sad  confusion  what  we  oivji  and  what 
we  owe  to  others ;  the  idea  of  property  (the  German  eigen) 
prevails  in  both  words,  but  the  distinction  between  the  two 
parties  has  become  effaced. 

In  Anglo-Saxon  writings  we  find  these  three  primitive 
verbs  appear  still,  from  time  to  time,  if  not  always  in  the 
infinitive,  at  least  in  other  tenses,  but  very  soon  the  let- 
ter g  lost  its  power,  and  gan  and  agan  were  reduced,  in 
composition,  to  tan,  until,  finally,  all  three  endings  were  re- 
duced to  a  uniform  an.   This  continued  to  mark  verbs  until 


LIVING  WORDS.  281 

the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest,  as  it  still  survives  in  Ger- 
man, where  all  verbs,  without  exception,  terminate  in  en. 
The  new  masters,  not  accustomed  to  such  a  termination  in 
their  own  tongue,  from  the  beginning  seem  to  have  fre- 
quently disregarded  it.  This  neglect  was  further  increased 
by  the  fact  that  they  were  largely  in  the  habit  of  giving  a 
nasal  sound  to  the  combination  an.  It  is  well  known  that 
even  the  Romans  already  gave  this,  or  a  similar  sound,  to 
the  letters  m  and  n  preceded  by  vowels,  which  led  to  the 
suppression  of  accusatives  in  wm,  am,  em,  &c.,  in  Latin  poets, 
whenever  the  metre  required  it.  The  effect  was,  no  doubt, 
a  similar  one  in  regard  to  our  Anglo-Saxon  an^  of  the 
origin  and  meaning  of  which  the  Normans  could  not  be 
expected  to  be  aware.  When  the  sound  of  the  syllable 
had  thus  become  indistinct,  the  whole  was  not  at  once 
dropped,  but  at  first  only  the  final  consonant.  Hence  we 
find  in  Wickliffe  verbs  appearing  quite  frequently  without 
the  7i,  and  then  the  diminution  of  the  fuller  a  into  the 
less  distinct  e  followed  almost  as  a  matter  of  necessity. 
Hence  we  read,  Luke  i.  13,  "  Thi  wif  sceal  here  to  the  a 
sone,"  and  v.  16,  "He  schal  converte"  Chaucer  ends 
almost  all  his  verbs  thus,  and  says,  — 

"  She  wolde  wepe  if  that  she  saw  a  mous," 

but  yet  he  never  fails  to  accentuate  the  final  e  and  to  count 
it  as  a  syllable.  Spenser  has  a  few  verbs  in  en  remaining, 
as  e.  ^. :  — 

"  That  well  may  semen  true.''— Fairy  Queen,  VII.  7. 

After  his  time,  however,  few  cases  occur,  and  soon  even  the 
final  e  was  doomed  to  disappear.  We  need  not  wonder, 
therefore,  that  modern  English  has  but  a  small  number  of 
verbs  lefl  in  which  the  original  termination  has  been  pre- 
served. Such  are,  to  learn,  which  was  at  first  lear-an,  as  is 
easily  proved  by  the  word  lore  for  knowledge.  To  mourn 
and  to  warn,  speak  for  themselves,  but  to  beckon  and  to 
reckon  are  sad  evidences  of  misspelling,  both  having  orig- 


282  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

inally  terminated  in  an.  At  a  later  period  it  became  the 
fashion  to  make  new  verbs,  mostly  from  adjectives,  by  the 
addition  of  the  former  en.  Thus  arose  our  words  to  soften, 
to  strengthen,  to  weaken,  and  to  quicken,  which  do  not  show 
the  old  Anglo-Saxon  form.  This  effort  to  introduce  a  new 
grammatical  form  was  not,  however,  very  successful,  and 
we  may  judge  of  the  difficulty  of  persuading  the  people  to 
accept  such  innovations  from  the  loss  of  certain  verbs  of 
this  kind,  that  were  really  useful  and  desirable.  Such  is  the 
verb  to  worsen,  employed  by  Milton  and  by  Southey,  but 
now  fallen  into  disuse. 

About  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  all  verbs 
had  become  so  uniform  as  no  longer  to  be  distinguished 
from  the  nouns,  as  both  classes  of  words  were  almost  uni- 
versally written  with  a  final,  but  silent,  e.  It  was  then  that 
the  usage  was  established  of  prefixing  the  particle  to  to 
verbs,  as  the  was  placed  before  nouns.  This  was,  of  course, 
not  an  arbitrary  choice.  The  particle  to  is  the  representa- 
tive of  the  Old  Gothic  verb  tu-an,  from  which  we  derive 
our  verb  to  do,  as  the  Germans  have  their  thun.  Pre- 
fixed to  a  word  which,  like  hate,  love,  fear,  and  sleep,  might 
be  a  noun  as  well  as  a  verb,  it  indicated  at  once  that  it  was 
to  be  taken  in  an  active  sense,  and  thus  enabled  the  reader 
or  the  hearer  immediately  to  avoid  any  misapprehension. 
It  is  the  same  process  which  we  pursue  now  when  we  say 
I  do  know,  in  order  to  intensify  or  to  emphasize  the  active 
meaning  of  a  verb.  Whenever  a  pronoun  is  added  to  the 
verb,  it  suffices  to  show  the  nature  of  the  word,  and  thus 
the  addition  of  to  was  and  is  necessary  only  in  the  infinitive, 
of  which  it  is  now  considered  an  essential  sign. 

Another  class  of  verbs,  not  very  numerous  but  extremely 
interesting  to  the  philologist,  has  been  obtained  by  a  pro- 
cess of  derivation  which  belongs  only  to  the  most  perfect 
languages,  where  the  cumbersome  mechanism  of  ruder 
idioms  has  been  abandoned  and  a  most  delicate  change,  a 
mere  hint,  has  the  power  to  convey  a  change  of  meaning. 


LIVING  WORDS.  283 

What  can  be  more  subtle,  for  instance,  than  the  change  of 
a  final  consonant  merely  from  a  sharp  to  a  flat  sound, 
with  the  addition  of  a  silent  e,  to  indicate  the  process  of 
derivation  ?  And  yet  by  this  slight  modification  we  obtain 
from  — 

grass,  ^raze,         'price,  prize,         wreath,  wreafAe,        half,  ^atoe, 
glass,  glaze,  breath,  breathe,    cloth,  clothe,  calf,  calve, 

and  from  use  and  house,  without  even  that  slight  external 
evidence,  by  a  mere  change  of  sound,  the  verbs  to  house 
and  to  use. 

The  number  of  verbs  derived  from  other  and  older  verbs 
by  a  change  of  the  root  itself  is  much  larger.  This  process 
is  one  of  the  most  striking  characteristics  of  all  German 
idioms,  and  threefold.  The  change  may  affect  the  radical 
vowel  only,  and  thus  we  obtain  from  — 

hite,  bait,  fall,  fell,  rip,  rob,  sweep,  swoop. 

bind,  bend,  grind,  ground,  rise,  raise  (rouse),  tint,  taint, 

breed,  brood,  hang,  hinge,  reel,  roll,  tap,  tip  (top), 

chip,  chop,  lie,  lay  (lag),  sip,  sop  (sup),  temper,  tamper, 

creak,  croak,  lose,  loose,  stint,  stunt,  wind,  wend, 

deal,  dole,  pain,  pine,  strike,  stroke,  wreathe,  writhe ; 

drip, rfrqp  (droop),  pickj^ec^,  sit,  se^  (seat), 

or  it  piay  affect  the  radical  consonant  only,  as  in  — 

dip,  dive,  gulp,  {en)gulph,  twine,  tmst, 

drive,  drift,  lurk,  lurch,  wake,  watch, 

hear(ear),Aear^(en)  rend,  rewi,  &c. 

or  it  may  affect  vowel  and  consonant  both,  as  in  — 

break,  breach  draw,  drown,  quail,  quell,  wear,  worry, 

and  broach,  drink,  drench,  seave,  sift,  wring,  wrench, 

dog,  dodge,  lance,  launch,  soil,  sully,  &c. 

drag,  dredge,  poke,  poach,  stink,  stench, 

It  is  not  quite  so  clearly  to  be  ascertained,  in  the  present 
state  of  our  language,  how  verbs  were*  originally  obtained 
from  other  words  by  the  addition  of  a  letter  at  the  begin- 
ning.    Thus  c  was  prefixed,  and  it  gave  us  from  — 

log,  clog,  ram,  cram,  rumple,  crumple. 

lump,  clump,  rib  (rob),  C7'ibj 


284  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Or  d  was  changed  by  the  addition  of  an  aspirate  into  th, 
and  drill  became  trill  or  thrill^  and  drive  thrive.  The  letter 
5,  when  thus  used,  seems  to  correspond  to  the  Latin  ex  in 
exiguus,  the  German  wr,  and  the  Gothic  us.  It  is  not 
limited  to  the  formation  of  verbs  only,  for  it  gave  us,  also, 
the  nouns  slime  from  lime,  and  stilt,  spine,  and  strumpet 
from  tilt,  pin,  and  trumpet.    Among  verbs  we  obtain  from — 

crawl,  scrawl,        melt,  smell,  patter,  spatter,        way,  sway, 

cold,  scold,  mash,  smash,  quash,  squash,        wag,  swag, 

\&Bh,  slash,  nip,  snip,  tram]p\e,  strample,  wing,  swing ; 

and  with  a  slight  modification  of  the  root,  from  — 

dip,  steep,  leap,  slip,  tap,  stab,  whip,  sweep, 

lag,  slack,  nose,  sneeze,  weigh,  sway,  wet,  sweat. 

heave,  shove. 

The  surviving  influence  of  the  Latin  prefix  dis  has  also 
occasionally  left  us  the  letter  s  before  verbs,  as  in  stain 
from  disteindre,  and  in  scorch  from  discorticare.  By  the 
force  of  analogy  other  verbs,  also,  have  been  made,  which 
simply  prefix  st  to  ordinary  words,  and  thus  our  language 
has  been  enriched  with  verbs  like  stroll  from  roll,  string 
from  ring,  strive  from  rive,  and  strip  from  rip.  The  inser- 
tion of  an  s  in  the  middle  of  the  word  has  changed  gap  into 
gasp,  and  bake  into  hash,  and  at  the  same  time  slightly 
modified  the  original  meaning. 

Verbs,  finally,  have  their  diminutive  terminations  as  well 
as  nouns,  though,  unfortunately,  the  number  is  only  small 
and  not  likely  to  be  much  extended,  if  we  may  judge  from 
the  few  unsuccessful  efforts  made  by  some  late  writers. 
The  addition  of  er  changes  chat  into  chatter  and  blind  into 
blunder,  flit  into  flutter,  and  blow  into  bluster.  To  stut, 
which  Butler  still  mentions  as  one  of  the  signs  of  melan- 
choly, when  he  speaks  of  "  stutting  or  tripping  in  speech," 
is  now  only  used  as  stutter.  The  more  fertile  diminutive  is 
le,  which  has  given  us,  — 

bab,  hobble,  crack,  crackle,        drip,  dribble,  gripe,  grapple, 

busy,  bustle,  daub,  dabble,  gab,  gabble,  hurt,  hurtle, 


LIVING  WORDS.  285 

nip,  nibble,  stiff,  stifle,  tip,  tipple,  "wag,  waggle, 

prate,  prattle,  stride,  straddle,  top,  topple,  wrest,  wrestle. 

rip,  rw^e,  strike,  struggle,  tramp,  trample,    wring,  wrinkle. 

set,  se«/e,  take,  tackle,  wade,  waddle, 

shove,  shuffle,  throat,  throttle. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  although  our  English  cannot  com- 
pare with  her  more  fortunate  sister  on  the  Continent  in  the 
number  and  variety  of  verbs,  it  possesses,  nevertheless,  a 
keen  perception  yet  of  these  delicate  changes,  by  which  the 
slightest  modification  of  a  single  letter  becomes  the  expres- 
sion of  a  corresponding  modification  of  meaning.  Our  Sax- 
on fathers  had  another  process  by  which  they  obtained  new 
verbs  from  Saxon  roots  :  it  consisted  in  the  use  of  two  pre- 
fixes, ge  and  on,  traces  of  which  now  survive  only  in  a  few 
cases  under  the  form  of  a.  The  first  of  the  two  was  a  favor- 
ite and  most  distinguishing  feature  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  verb, 
and  its  disappearance  is  one  of  the  first,  if  not  the  very  first, 
decided  evidences  of  the  change  from  Anglo-Saxon  into 
English,  even  before  the  time  of  the  Norman-French. 

It  was  used  not  only  as  a  mark  of  the  participle  past,  for 
which  purpose  it  is  still  employed  in  German  verbs,  but 
also  as  a  verbal  prefix  before  any  verb  and  any  part  of  a 
verb.  Even  the  oldest  authors,  however,  substitute  a  sim- 
ple y  for  itj  as  in  "  Alesaundre,"  I.  1867  :  — 

"  The  knyght  is  redy  on  justers 
Alle  yarmed  surthe  well 
Bunny,  and  launce,  and  sweord  of  stele." 

Even  the  "  Brut  of  Layamon "  has  idemed  for  gedemedy 
icome  for  gecome,  and  ispeken,  as  the  oldest  of  our  songs 

has  — 

"  Sumer  is  icumen  in, 
Lhude  singe  cuccu." 

Chaucer  occasionally  reminds  us  of  the  old  usage  when  he 

employs  ifalle,  igo,  and  ifonden  for  the  participles  fallen, 

gone,  and  found,  and  in  5599  he  says,  — 

"  Thou  hast  yhadde  five  husbondes." 

Spenser  preserves  some  words  with  g,  as  he  does  many 


286  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

antique  words,  not  because  they  were  in  use  in  his  day,  but 
because  they  suited  the  peculiar  character  he  wished  to 
give  to  his  verses.  In  like  manner,  Fairfax's  "  Tasso " 
abounds  with  words  like  ihore^  ihuiU,  and  ihronyht.  Shake- 
speare uses  now  and  then  yclad  and  yclept^  but  probably 
only  with  a  view  to  burlesque  or  grotesque  effect.  Thom- 
son's "  Castle  of  Indolence "  has  also  a  {q^n  such  words, 
apparently  in  imitation  of  Spenser,  and  in  Milton,  even,  y 
occurs  at  least  three  times.  A  curious  evidence  of  the 
readiness  with  which  we  forget  the  original  meaning  of 
once  familiar  words  is  the  use  oi  Iwiss^  now  nearly  obso- 
lete but  once  quite  common,  for  ywiss^  which  corresponds 
to  the  German  gewisz.  Although  this  particle  ge  seems 
thus  no  longer  to  be  used  in  our  English,  it  is  still  pre- 
served in  part  under  various  forms.  Thus  we  meet,  even 
now,  occasionally  with  the  antiquated  terms  of  yclad  and 
yclept,  and  often  with  happy  effect.  The  latter  term  is  now 
only  used  with  reference  to  names,  though  originally  it  cor- 
responded to  all  the  meanings  of  the  verb  "  to  call,"  as  in 
Matthew  xx.  1 6,  where  the  ancient  version  has  "  Manega 
synt  geclypoda,'*  for  "  Many  be  called."  The  modern  enough 
retains  in  its  first  letter  the  marks  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
genog  (German  genug),  which  in  Old  English  already  was 
softened  into  ynowh.  Few  suspect  the  hidden  manner  in 
which  this  ancient  ge  still  lurks  in  some  compound  words 
of  our  day,  and  yet  we  can  easily  trace  the  old  "  hand  ge 
weorc^^  made  by  hand,  in  our  handiwork,  and  we  shall 
then  understand  the  peculiar  formation  of  other  similar 
words,  like  handicraft,  handigrip,  handicap,  and  nightin- 
gale. We  shall  find,  moreover,  upon  a  somewhat  more 
careful  investigation  of  the  matter,  that  it  has  not  simply 
dropped  out  of  the  language,  like  a  decayed  member,  but 
by  a  simple  and  very  natural  transition  changed  into  he^ 
under  which  form  it  is  now  frequently  disguised.  This  is 
not  a  mere  supposition,  but  can  easily  be  proved  by  the 
fact  that  of  the  large  number  of  modern  verbs  which  begin 


LIVING  WORDS.  287 

with  he,  only  about  thirty  or  forty  are  found  in  Anglo-Saxon 
writers,  while  all  the  others  may  be  traced  to  recent 
days,  when  they  were  made  in  imitation  of  others  already 
existing.  "  The  Paston'  Letters,"  for  instance,  still  have 
headed  simply  for  beheaded,  (vol.  ii.  letter  32,)  and  Chaucer 
says,  "  That  appertaineth  and  longeth  all  onely  to  the 
judges  "  ("  Tale  of  Meliboeus  ").  It  seems  that  anciently 
the  particle  be,  by  itself,  had  the  power  of  giving  an  active 
meaning  to  verbs,  and  hence  we  obtained  hedim,  hegetj 
begird,  benumb,  bereave,  beseech,  begin,  bespeak,  from  Saxon 
words,  and  from  French  sources,  beguile,  besot,  and  besiege. 
Bedew  and  bestrew,  unbefriended  and  unbefitting,  are  compar- 
atively modern  words  ;  others  have  gone  out  of  fashion,  as 
Shakespeare's  befortune,  benetted,  and  beweep,  -whilst  unbe- 
known is  now  considered  a  vulgarism,  although  Chaucer 
says  to  beknow.  Our  modem  beloved  is  evidently  noth- 
ing else  but  the  Anglo-Saxon  participle  gelufod,  and  in  like 
manner  belong  was  once  gelong,  and  believed  once  gelyfedy 
for  Gower  uses  frequently  leve  alone,  and  Chaucer,  even, 
has  the  simple  form  quite  often.  There  are  even  false 
forms  of  this  kind  existing,  such  as  the  contraction  of 
be  and  gone  into  one  word,  begone.  Beware,  also,  was  origi- 
nally not  written  in  one  word :  the  Bible  said,  "  Of  whom 
be  thou  ware  also,"  (2  Tim.  iv.  5,)  and  Pope  says  cor- 
rectly, "Be  ware  of  man,"  which  Tennyson  imitates  in 
the  line,  — 

"  They  were  ware  that  all  the  decks  were  dense." 
The  prefix  ge  has  lastly  changed  sometimes  into  a  simple 
a,  although  it  ought  to  be  remembered  that  this  same  a  is 
by  some  claimed  as  a  remnant  of  the  grammar  of  the 
Britons,  and  thus  as  a  Celtic  element  of  our  English.  We 
can,  however,  distinctly  trace  the  change  from  gebidan 
to  abide,  and  the  like  origin  of  arise,  awake,  arouse,  and 
ahet.  Most  of  the  forms  now  in  use  are  participles,  as 
the  correctly  formed,  but  now  condemned,  afeared,  adrift, 
ashamed,  athirst,  etc.     Occasionally  the  same  letter  repre- 


288  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

sents  the  ancient  prefix  on.  "  The  Knight's  Tale  "  (1689) 
has  "O/i  huntyng  ben  they  ridden,"  and  the  Bible  of 
King  James  (Acts  xiii.  36)  has  "fell  on  sleep,"  but  already 
Bentley's  "  Dissertation  on  Phalaria  "  says,  "  Yet  the  same 
man  here,  in  his  great  wisdom,  would  have  a  learned  Uni- 
versity make  barbarisms  a  purpose,"  as  abed  and  aloft 
mean  "  on  the  bed  "  and  "  on  the  loft."  In  a  few  cases  the 
same  prefix  a  can  be  traced  back  to  its  French  origin. 
Thus  alarm  comes  from  a  Vairme,  abase  from  a  bas,  and 
abandon  from  the  old  a  ban  donner. 

The  number  of  English  verbs  obtained  by  genuine  com- 
position is,  unfortunately,  quite  small,  Latin  substitutes 
having  generally  driven  out  the  good  old  Saxon  words. 
Our  German  sister  is  happier  in  this  respect,  and  preserves 
to  this  day  a  host  of  simple,  suggestive  words  of  this  class, 
which  we  once  shared  with  her  and  now  but  imperfectly 
replace  by  foreign  terms.  Among  the  few  classes  of  com- 
pounds which  remain,  those  with  /or  are  peculiar,  because 
they  contain  two  different  words,  now  often  confounded. 
Some  have  their  origin  in  the  Saxon  verb  faran,  to  go,  to 
travel,  etc.,  whence  our  farewell,  the  wish  and  prayer  for 
the  welfare  of  our  friends.  Fare  itself  survives  in  the  word 
fbr  the  price  we  give  for  traveling  by  land  or  sea,  and 
names  like  Eel/are,  a  place  near  Chertsey,  in  the  Thames, 
to  which  the  young  eels  come  up  in  spring.  Ferry,  as  a 
passage  by  water,  and  ford,  or  fared,  a  passage  on  foot  ^ 
through  the  water,  come  from  the  same  root.  In  compound 
verbs  it  assumes  the  form  of  for  and  suggests,  like  its  Ger- 
man representative  ver,  always  the  idea  of  parting  or  de- 
struction :  hence  our  forbid,  forsake,  forget,  and  forswear  ; 
forgive,  for  let,  and  forlorn.  The  relation  between  the  Eng- 
lish and  the  German  term  is  very  clearly  shown  in  "  Robert 
of  Gloucester,"  who  always  says  vergaf,  vergon,  vergyte,  and 
verlore,  although  "  Piers  Ploughman  "  already  has  "  fier 
shale /orbrenne,"  (44). 

The  other  class  of  these  compounds  derive  their  origin 


LIVING  WORDS.  289 

from  the  word  before,  and  hence  forego  means  to  precede, 
forethinh  to  premeditate,  and  foretell  and  forestall  have 
similar  meanings.  As  the  tendency  to  greater  uniformity 
has  already  led  to  much  confusion  between  these  two  words, 
and,  e.  g.,  forgo  and  forego  are  hardly  any  longer  distin- 
guished, it  is  all  the  more  important  to  remember,  at  least, 
historically  the  different  origin  of  such  words. 

The  large  variety  of  verbs,  and  the  almost  unlimited  free- 
dom with  which  we  can  obtain  them  from  other  parts  of 
speech,  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  use  made  of  verbs. 
It  seems  as  if  all  that  our  language  nowadays  desired  was 
to  have  the  verbal  idea  abundantly  represented.  It  is  no 
longer,  as  in  ancient  languages  and  in  Anglo-Saxon,  adapted 
by  numerous  inflections  and  changes  to  the  various  purposes 
for  which  it  serves ;  a  conjugation  of  the  verb  can  hardly 
be  said  to  exist ;  we  have  laid  aside  not  only  the  passive 
and  middle  voice,  the  optative  and  other  moods  of  Greek 
verbs,  but  we  have  abandoned  also  the  many  tenses  of  the 
Latin  verb,  which  the  Romance  languages  still  retain,  and 
after  thus  stripping  the  verb  of  all  power  to  express  time 
and  mood,  the  tendency  of  our  day  is  to  free  it  more  and 
more  even  of  its  connection  with  person. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  verb  had  its  usual  complement  of  per- 
sonal inflections,  which,  if  they  added  little  to  the  clearness 
and  force  of  the  language,  certainly  contributed  much  to  the 
beauty  and  variety  of  its  forms.  Of  these  but  few  are  left 
in  our  day.  As  far  as  a  careful  study  of  the  language 
enables  us  to  judge,  the  last  remnant  of  the  Saxon  con- 
jugation was  the  plural  in  en,  which  is  still  used  in  Lanca- 
shire, the  North  of  England,  York,  and  Derbyshire.  Until 
the  time  of  Henry  VIII.,  it  seems  to  have  maintained  itself 
in  general  use,  although  Chaucer  already  terminates  his 
verbs  both  in  e  and  in  en.  The  fuller  termination  does  not 
altogether  disappear  until  the  time  of  Spenser,  for  even 
Fuller  uses  it,  though  rarely;  but  when  it  at  last  was 
abandoned,  there  disappeared  with  it  the  last  characteristic 
19 


290  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

of  a  grammar  different  from  modern  English.  The  gradual 
change  is  very  perceptible  in  the  Bible  versions ;  Wickliffe 
still  said :  "  And  fluddes  camen  and  wyndis  blewen,''  while 
Tyndale  has :  "  And  fluddes  came,  and  wyndes  hlewe  and 
beet  upon  that  house,  and  it  fell,  and  great  was  the  fall  of 
it."  The  loss  was  not  merely  one  of  form,  but  also  of  sound, 
as  Ben  Jonson  well  remarks  in  his  Grammar :  "  In  former 
times,  till  about  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  they  (the  per- 
sons of  the  plural)  were  wont  to  be  formed  by  adding  en. 
But  now  (whatsoever  is  the  cause),  it  hath  quite  growne 
out  of  use,  and  that  other  e  so  generally  prevails,  that  I 

dare  not  presume  to  set  this  afoot  againe Albeit,  to 

tell  you  my  opinion,  I  am  persuaded  that  the  lack  thereof, 
well  considered,  will  be  found  a  great  blemish  to  our 
tongue."  Poets,  also,  have  reason  to  regret  its  loss,  for  it 
was  an  important  aid  to  rhythm,  as  we  may  judge  from 
many  happy  lines  of  Chaucer,  like  the  following :  — 

"  And  small  fowles  maken  melodie 
That  slepen  al  the  night  with  open  yhe." 

The  only  personal  inflections  left  us  in  our  day  are  those 
of  the  second  and  third  person  singular.  The  termination 
est,  limited  of  course  to  the  rare  use  of  the  corresponding 
pronoun,  is  still  of  great  force,  and  makes  us  regret  the  loss 
of  a  more  general  use.  More  rarely  still  do  we  meet  with 
the  eth  of  the  third  person,  now  almost  exclusively  employed 
in  poetry,  or  when  we  speak  with  great  emphasis  on  solemn 
subjects,  and  for  sacred  purposes.  The  loss  of  this  syllable 
must  have  been  very  gradual  and  almost  imperceptible,  for 
in  Sir  Thomas  More's  works,  as  published  in  1527  by  order 
of  Queen  Mary,  we  find  that  looketh^  smileth,  &c.,  are  still 
written,  but  evidently  pronounced  as  one  syllable,  as  we 
judge  from  the  metre  of  his  poems,  in  which  he  shows  a  very 
accurate  and  fastidious  ear.  On  the  other  hand,  it  appears 
that  the  same  e  was  as  often  elided  in  writing  when  it  had 
evidently  to  be  pronounced,  for  words  printed  thus  :  whirltk, 
plucktk,  and  startlth  are  clearly  unpronounceable.   The  mod- 


LIVING  WORDS.  291 

ern  fashion  of  substituting  s  for  the  full  syllable  eth  has  not 
only  led  to  greater  uniformity,  but  also  produced  an  increase 
of  that  letter  which  is  already  too  frequent  in  English,  and 
thus  added  to  the  hissing,  which  strikes  the  ear  of  foreign- 
ers with  such  unpleasant  force. 

The  modifications  of  the  verb  which  serve  to  designate 
the  time  of  its  action,  have,  in  like  manner,  disappeared  in 
English,  until  hardly  more  than  two  distinct  forms  have  sur- 
vived. The  distinction  of  so-called  tenses  is,  of  course,  a 
purely  arbitrary  arrangement,  and  nearly  every  nation  has 
its  own  system.  In  one  language  the  present  is  considered 
so  fleeting  that  it  is  either  still  future  or  already  past ;  in 
another,  the  past  is  subdivided  into  minute  periods,  and 
thus  where  one  idiom  is  content  with  two  or  three  tenses, 
another  has  a  dozen.  In  fact,  there  is  no  reason  why  there 
might  not  be  as  many  tenses  as  we  choose  to  make  sub- 
divisions of  time.  Our  English,  however,  goes  here  also 
farther  than  all  other  modern  languages,  disdaining  to  in- 
cumber the  verb  with  numerous  forms,  and  leaving  it  to  the 
connection  to  suggest  the  precise  time  of  its  action.  It  has, 
properly  speaking,  but  two  tenses,  the  definite  and  the  in- 
definite —  all  others  suggestive  of  past  or  of  future  it  ex- 
presses by  what  we  call  auxiliary  verbs. 

The  indefinite  tense,  which  our  grammars  persist  in  call- 
ing the  present,  is  of  course  represented  by  the  simple  form 
of  the  verb  itself,  without  any  further  change,  and  to  love 
and  I  love,  to  go  and  I  go,  remain  the  same.  The  definite 
tense,  however,  which  expresses  the  only  time  that  can  be 
spoken  of  with  precision,  the  past,  seems  in  Anglo-Saxon 
always  to  have  been  formed  by  genuine  inflection.  But 
although  we  are  justified  in  presuming  that  in  the  first  stage 
of  our  language  all  verbs  were  strong,  we  find  that  at  the 
time  of  the  earliest  manuscripts  the  idiom  was  already  so 
far  modified  as  to  have  many  weak  verbs  by  their  side. 
Since  then,  the  number  of  the  latter  has  steadily  increased 
by  the  force  of  analogy,  and  the  tendency  to  uniformity, 


292  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

and  whilst  in  Old  English  strong  verbs  had  still  a  large 
majority,  they  are  now  in  so  sad  a  minority  as  to  be  stigma- 
tized by  the  name  of  irregular  verbs. 

The  manner  of  inflection  for  the  purpose  of  forming  the 
past  tense  was,  however,  so  varied  as  to  produce  now  several 
classes  of  strong  verbs.  Purely  strong  verbs,  which  are 
almost  all  intransitive  and  radical,  make  it,  in  the  first 
place,  by  merely  changing  the  radical  vowel,  as  in  — 

run,  ran ;  sing,  sang ;  spin,  span ;  come,  came ;  sink,  sank. 

The  number  of  these  is  still  quite  considerable  ;  many,  how- 
ever, have  been  entirely  lost,  and  still  others  survive  only 
in  certain  localities.  Thus  sew,  from  to  sow,  is  used  by 
Gower  in  "  De  Confessione  Amantis,"  V.  fol.  936 ;  snew, 
from  to  snow,  by  Holinshead,  who,  speaking  of  the  tragedy 
of  Dido,  performed  before  Prince  Alasco,  says  (1583)  :  "  It 
snew  an  artificial  kind  of  snow  ; "  crew,  from  to  crow,  occurs 
in  the  Bible,  when  "  the  cock  crew "  to  the  grief  of  St. 
Peter,  and  mought  from  I  might,  now  accounted  a  vulgar- 
ism, was  correct  in  the  days  of  Chaucer,  and  is  so  used  by 
Fairfax.  All  these  words,  together  with  others  like  I  rep, 
from  to  reap,  and  I  mew,  from  to  mow,  are  still  in  constant 
use  in  the  North  of  England,  and  in  Essex ;  and  I  hove,  I 
puck,  I  shuck,  I  squoze,  and  I  clomb,  are  frequently  heard  in 
Hereford  and  other  inland  counties.  The  last-mentioned 
preterit  seems  to  have  been  yet  in  use  in  Milton's  days,  for 
he  says :  — 

"  So  clmb  the  first  great  thief  into  God's  fold, 
So  since,  into  his  church  lewd  hirelings  climb." 

Paradise  Lost. 

How  much  fashion  and  the  fanciful  taste  of  poets  must  have 
had  to  do  with  these  changes,  may  be  judged  from  the  fact 
that  even  the  oldest  authors  used  weak  forms  of  strong 
verbs,  which  are  not  yet  universally  adopted  in  our  day. 
In  the  "  Morte  d'  Arthur  "  we  find,  — 

"  He  grow'd  in  might  and  strength." 


LIVING  WORDS.  293 

And  in  the  "  Franklin's  Tale,"  — 

"  Of  fyshe  and  fleshe,  and  that  so  plenteouse, 
It  snewed  in  bis  house  of  mete  and  drinke, 
Of  all  daintees  that  men  could  of  thinke." 

Other  forms  of  the  kind  are  even  now  in  the  process  of 
changing ;  thus  we  seldom  say  swoU,  but  more  frequently 
swelled,  and  not  hung,  but  hanged,  though  the  first  named 
are  certainly  not  incorrect. 

A  second  class  of  strong  verbs  change  with  the  radical 
vowel  the  final  radical  consonant  also,  as  in  — 

bring,  brought,  catch,  caught,  buy,  bought, 

teach,  taught,  seek,  sought,  think,  thought. 

The  reason  of  this  additional  change,  so  far  from  being 
irregular,  is  easily  seen  ;  in  all  these  verbs  the  final  conso- 
nant c,  g,  or  k,  &c.,  comes  in  immediate  contact  with  the 
harsh  letter  t,  and  then,  as  in  all  such  cases  throughout  the 
language,  always  changes  into  h.  Here,  also,  the  gradual 
nature  of  the  change  from  strong  to  weak  verbs  may  be 
easily  traced.  Catched  is  not  quite  out  of  use  yet,  though 
generally  superseded  by  caught,  whilst  Shakespeare's  — 

"  He  raught  me  his  hand,"  {Henry  V.,  IV.  6,) 

would  be  hardly  understood  now,  and  his  distraught,  ("  Rich- 
ard III.,"  III.  5,  and  alias),  has  been  justly  abandoned,  be- 
cause here  a  foreign  word,  the  Latin  distraho,  was  actually 
subjected  to  purely  Saxon  rules. 

We  have  already  above  referred  to  the  fact  that  the 
majority  of  strong  verbs  have  become  weak  by  the  force  of 
analogy  ;  there  are,  however,  other  reasons  which  have  pro- 
duced the  same  effect.  Some,  it  seems,  have  changed  their 
form  slightly  in  order  to  indicate  a  corresponding  change 
from  the  neuter  to  the  active  meaning,  and  in  this  transfor- 
mation lost  the  power  of  making  the  past  by  inflection ; 
such  are  the  verbs  drench,  from  drink, /eZ/,  from  fall,  set, 
from  sit,  and  others.  A  combination  of  strong  verbs  with 
other  words  seems  to  have  produced  a  similar  effect,  for 


294  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

while  to  do  and  to  hredk  are  strong,  to  undo  and  to  breakfast 
are  weak. 

Weak  verbs  have,  from  of  old,  formed  their  past  tense 
by  the  addition  of  d,  which  was  originally  nothing  else  than 
the  past  tense  of  the  verb  to  do,  —  did.  This  has  been  clearly 
proved  by  a  comparison  of  Anglo-Saxon  with  its  near  rela- 
tive, the  Gothic,  where  the  full  auxiliary  dedum,  &c.,  has 
been  preserved.  Hence  I  loved  is  the  same  as  Hove  did, 
or  as  we  still  constantly  say,  /  did  love.  If  we  ask  the 
question  which  would  naturally  suggest  itself  to  our  mind, 
how  did  itself  was  formed,  we  find  here  also  the  explanation 
in  kindred  languages,  and  their  rule  to  form  strong  verbs 
by  reduplication.  Now  the  final  syllable  in  Anglo-Saxon 
dide,  our  did,  is  not  a  termination,  but  the  verb  itself,  and 
the  first  syllable,  di,  is  a  re-duplication  of  the  root,  all  pre- 
terits of  old  verbs  being  thus  made  in  Anglo-Saxon,  as 
well  as  in  Greek  and  in  Sanscrit. 

This  once  being  done,  the  preterite  did  was  then  added 
to  other  verbal  roots  in  order  to  express  that  the  action  of 
the  verb  itself  is  done  or  finished,  as  we  are  still  in  the  habit 
of  saying,  "  I  do  say  so,"  and  as  the  illiterate  of  England 
and  the  blacks  of  America  say,  "  I  done  do  that."  The 
additional  e  between  the  final  d  and  the  root  of  the  verb 
is  merely  euphonic,  used  to  preserve  the  sound  of  certain 
delicate  consonants ;  hence  the  difference  between  loved, 
longed,  and  loaded,  and  heard,  said,  and  paid.  Since  the 
days  of  Swift,  who  first  complained  of  this  change  to  Addi- 
son and  thus  brought  the  matter  to  public  notice  in  the 
"  Spectator,*  the  "  natural  aversion  to  loquacity  "  of  the  Eng- 
lish, as  he  calls  it,  has  made  this  great  change  of  suppress- 
ing the  sound  of  the  e.  The  "  Spectator "  mentions  with 
regret,  that  the  words  drowned,  walked,  and  arrived,  are 
beginning  to  be  pronounced  drown' d,  walJcd,  and  arrived, 
and  that  thus  a  tenth  part  of  our  words  appear  now  as  so 
many  clusters  of  consonants.  The  spelling  here  also,  soon 
followed  the  pronunciation  of  these  words,  and  thus  arose 


LIVING  WORDS.  295 

the  general  tendency  to  contract  all  similar  forms.  This 
led,  in  the  end,  to  a  change  of  the  final  d,  when  placed  after 
two  consonants,  into  t,  and  hence  our  learnt,  rent,  and  henty 
for  learned,  rented,  and  bended ;  or  the  d  has  entirely  dis- 
appeared after  another  d  or  after  t,  as  in  let,  cut,  set,  and 
shred,  rid,  and  read,  changes  which  are,  in  truth,  nothing 
more  than   an  orthographical  convenience. 

The  so-called  irregular  verbs,  finally,  belong  properly  to 
the  same  category  to  which  irregular  comparatives  were 
assigned ;  they  are  not  really  irregular,  but  prove,  when 
properly  examined,  to  be  parts  of  different  verbs,  united 
only  by  that  *'  usus  quern  penes  arhitrium  est  etjus  et  norma 
loquendW  Thus,  I  went,  has  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  the 
verb  to  go,  but  belongs  to  the  verb  to  wend,  which  was  for- 
merly in  full  use.  Chaucer  says  not  only  in  his  "  Text  of 
Love  "  he  wendeth,  but  even  "  It  befell  that  he  is  wentr  In 
the  "  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  '*  we  find  "  they  shall 
wend"  Milton  has  "  thou  wentest,"  (Paradise  Lost,  XII. 
610,)  and  Lord  Byron  says,  "  Childe  Harold  wends  through 
many  a  pleasant  place."  Now  its  use  is  almost  entirely 
limited  to  the  expression  "  to  wend  one's  way,"  and  gram- 
marians call  it  irregular. 

By  the  side  of  these  few  variations  of  form,  by  which  in 
one  case  the  past  time  is  distinguished  from  the  present, 
and  in  another  case  the  second  and  third  person  are  marked, 
the  verb  possesses  in  our  day  but  two  additional  forms :  the 
so-called  participles,  which  Yossius  quaintly  calls  mules, 
because  "•  they  partake  alike  of  the  noun  and  the  verb,  as 
the  mule  of  the  horse  and  the  ass." 

The  present  participle  ended  in  Anglo-Saxon  in  end, 
maintaining  thus  the  analogy  with  the  Greek  c^ovtc?,  and 
the  Latin  habewds.  This  ancient  termination  is  by  no 
means  quite  extinct  yet  in  England  ;  it  is  constantly  heard 
in  Lincolnshire,  Northumberland,  and  Scotland,  and,  in 
fact,  wherever  traces  may  be  found  of  Scandinavian  set- 
tlements.    There  words  like  goand  and  strikand  are  fre- 


296  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

quently  in  use,  reminding  us  of  the  c/wf,  which  forms  the 
regular  German  participle,  {gehend,  streichend,)  and  which 
is  occasionally  strengthened,  as  in  the  Scotch  farant,  its  com- 
pound auld-farant,  and  the  Shropshire  word  farantli/.  But 
it  survives  even  in  classic  English  ;  the  Saxon  word/rean, 
in  German  freien,  meant  to  love,  to  hold  dear,  and  has  left 
us  its  participle  in  friend,  anciently /reowc?.  So  also  the  op- 
posite sentiment  expressed  in  the  Saxon  verb  Jian,  to  hate, 
has  given  us  besides  the  other  two  derivatives, /oe  and/ewo?, 
its  participle  Jlend,  as  we  read  already  in  "  Gower,"  V. :  — 

"  For  he  no  more  than  he  fende, 
Unto  none  other  man  isjiendej 
But  all  toward  hymselfe  alone." 

This  termination  end  has  been  gradually  transformed  into 
our  modern  ing,  and  the  change  is  probably  due  to  two 
peculiar  influences,  which  throw  much  light  upon  the  grad- 
ual and  often  apparently  arbitrary  manner  in  which  modem 
languages  have  acquired  their  present  form.  The  Norman 
conquerors  on  one  hand,  were  no  doubt  disposed  to  give  to 
this  syllable  end  the  same  sound  which  these  letters  had  in 
their  own  tongue,  and  to  pronounce  it  as  they  did  their 
grand,  sang,  en,  and  other  words.  This  led  to  a  more  and 
more  nasal  pronunciation,  which  easily  passed  into  the  cor- 
responding ing,  and  from  the  spoken  to  the  written  word. 
On  the  other  hand,  our  ancestors  themselves  contributed 
probably  their  share  to  the  transformation.  Every  careful 
observer  must  have  been  struck  with  the  frequent  pronun- 
ciation of  ing  as  en  or  in  by  the  uneducated,  a  change  which 
is  almost  the  rule  among  the  blacks  in  the  Southern  States. 
There,  as  among  the  common  people  everywhere,  seein  is 
believin.  This  tendency  is  further  strengthened  by  the  fact 
that  many  of  these  condemned  vulgarisms  are  originally 
correct.  If  we  hear  a  man  say,  "  It  was  owen  to  my 
master,"  we  ought  to  hesitate  before  blaming  him  for  his 
bad  P^nglish  ;  owen  is  just  as  correct  as  owing,  for  when  we 
say  "  it  is  my  own,"  we  mean  nothing  more  by  it  than  "  it  is 


LIVING  WORDS.  297 

owen  to  me."  Now,  this  confusion  between  ing  and  en  or 
end,  being  once  established  and  aided  by  the  influence  of 
Norman  masters,  the  transition  from  the  ancient  end  to  the 
modern  ing  was  easily  though  slowly  accomplished,  and  we 
can  trace  the  gradual  encroachment  of  the  new  form  dis- 
tinctly from  century  to  century.  Nor  ought  we  to  overlook 
the  lesser  but  not  ineffective  influence  of  the  fact  that  the 
Anglo-Saxon  already  knew  verbal  substantives  in  yng,  cor- 
responding to  those  formed  by  the  Germans  in  ung,  so  that 
very  early  indeed  both  terminations,  end  and  yng,  must  have 
been  found  side  by  side,  formed  from  the  same  verb.  Thus 
our  word  dwelling  was  in  Anglo-Saxon  derived  from  wunian, 
to  dwell,  and  made  in  wumng,  (German,  Wohnung),  so  that 
in  «  Prologue,"  I.  608,  we  read,  — 

"  His  wonyng  was  ful  fayr  upon  an  heth." 
The  first  regular  participle  of  the  kind  occurs  probably  in 
"  Layamon's  Brut,"  though  only  once,  in  the  word  waldinge, 
Wickliffe  uses  still  persistently  the  ancient  form,  and  says, 
in  Mark  i.  7,  "  he  prechyde  sayande,  a  stalworther  thane  I 
schale  come  efter  me,  of  whom  I  am  not  worthe  do^nf al- 
iunde or  knelande  to  louse  the  thwouge  of  his  chancers  (chaus- 
sure)."  Chaucer,  however,  uses  -and  but  rarely  ;  in  return 
he  puzzles  his  readers  sorely  by  always  accenting  the  more 
fashionable  ing,  as  in  — 

"  Seeking  for  right,  which  I  of  thee  entreat," 
"  Damning  all  wrong  and  tortuous  injury," 

and  — 

^^  Riding  together  both  with  equal  pace," 
a  peculiarity  in  which  he  is  faithfully  followed  by  his  con- 
temporaries  and   successors,   even    to    Spenser's   "  Fairy 
Queen." 

That  the  change  must  have  obtained  very  early  may  be 
concluded  from  the  fact  that  already  in  1258,  a  genuine 
French  word,  barely  naturalized,  is  found  with  the  new 
termination,  for  in  the  translation  of  an  edict  of  Henry 
III.  from  the  Anglo-Norman  for  his  Saxon  subjects,  the 


298  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

word  crouninge  appears.  As  late  as  the  sixteenth  century, 
however,  both  the  old  and  the  new  form  still  occur  side  by 
side ;  and  it  is  not  until  the  greater  regularity  of  classic 
authors  of  that  age  settled  our  spelling  permanently,  that 
the  modern  form  prevailed  alone.  The  few  terminations 
in  end  which  survive,  have  generally  nothing  to  do  with 
Saxon,  but  are  more  or  less  direct  importations  from  the 
Latin.  Thus  legend  comes  from  legendum^  although  Home 
Tooke  sneeringly  says,  that  it  means  more  frequently 
quod  non  legendum.  Reverend  entered  through  the  church, 
and  was  at  first  given  to  all  judges,  as  they  were  long  by 
necessity  clerks,  though  now  to  ministers  only;  dividend 
designated  originally  what  ought  to  be  divided,  but  now 
what  actually  is  divided.  Prebend^  agenda,  and  similar 
words,  are  to  this  day  purely  Latin  terms. 

The  past  participle  can  hardly  be  viewed  as  more  than 
an  adjective  form  of  the  past  tense  of  the  verb.  We  need 
no  other  proof  of  this  than  the  regular  manner  of  its  deri- 
vation from  the  latter.  In  genuine  strong  verbs  its  form 
corresponds  simply  to  that  of  the  past  tense.  We  say  I 
bought^  and  a  bought  horse ;  I  thought,  and  a  good  thought. 
It  is  true  that  not  unfrequently  English  verbs  present  so- 
called  double  forms,  of  which  one  serves  for  the  past  tense, 
and  the  other  for  the  participle.  This  does  not,  however, 
indicate  a  different  origin  of  the  participle.  The  explana- 
tion is  found  in  the  fact  that  anciently  these  strong  verbs 
changed  the  radical  vowel  from  the  singular  of  the  past 
tense  to  the  plural,  using  generally  a  in  the  former  and  u 
in  the  latter.  This  difference  of  the  two  numbers  was  in 
accordance  with  a  general  law  to  which  all  Germanic  lan- 
guages are  found  subject.  Already  in  Old  English,  how- 
ever, the  custom  of  distinguishing  singular  and  plural  by 
any  change  of  form  ceased  to  be  observed,  and  both  became 
uniform,  though  not  yet  as  much  so  as  they  now  are.  For 
owing  to  the  want  of  any  absolute  authority  in  matters  of 
letters,  and  the  utterly  loose  orthography  of  those  days,  the 


LIVING  WORDS.  299 

two  forms  in  a  and  m,  were,  for  a  time,  allowed  to  drift  about 
loosely  in  the  language.  When,  subsequently,  a  demand 
arose  for  law  and  order,  not  in  society  only,  but  even  in 
language,  the  grammarians  had  nothing  better  to  recom- 
mend than  that  one  of  those  double  forms  was  to  be  got  rid 
of.  But,  in  the  mean  time,  the  loose  fragments  had  crystal- 
ized  afresh  into  a  fixed  shape,  simply  in  obedience  to  the 
common  consent  and  usage  of  educated  Englishmen,  and 
now  appear  in  relations  which  have  nothing  to  do  with  their 
first  position.  Grammarians  are  still  prone  to  call  them 
irregular,  thus  relieving  themselves  of  all  responsibility  for 
the  change  and  its  causes.  Now,  the  forms  in  a  are  con- 
fined to  the  active  past  tense,  and  those  in  u  all  changed 
into  participles.  Hence  we  say,  I  drank  and  I  was  drunk  ; 
we  speak  of  money  sunk,  not  sank  ;  of  linen  spun^  not  span. 
It  is  no  longer  considered  good  English  to  say  I  sung  a 
song,  but  I  sang ;  yet  nobody  would  say  that  a  "  song  had 
been  sang."  This  is  one  of  the  points  concerning  the  his- 
tory of  a  language  on  which  grammarians  have  absolutely 
nothing  to  say,  as  they  are  purely  historical.  For  there  never 
has  been  a  rule  or  a  law  to  settle  this ;  yet  the  fact  is  tacitly 
admitted  by  all  writers,  and  universally  acquiesced  in  by 
educated  persons.  It  shows,  evidently,  that  there  is  a 
spiritual  life  in  every  living  language,  which  makes  itself 
finally  manifest,  and  works  through  the  minds  of  all  speak- 
ers and  writers  as  its  own  artist.  As  a  necessary  conse- 
quence of  this  explanation,  we  find  that  the  process  is  still 
steadily  going  on,  the  distribution  of  the  two  forms  being 
by  no  means  finally  settled.  Thus  we  find  even  now  good 
writers  say  with  equal  correctness,  "  the  vessel  sank,''  and 
"  she  sunk ; "  and  swam  and  swum  were  until  lately  used  in- 
discriminately. 

A  further  change  has  occasionally  taken  place  in  these 
strong  past  participles,  when,  as  is  very  frequently  the  case, 
they  have  established  themselves  as  regular  adjectives. 
Thus  strong  is  itself  derived  from  to  string,  through  the  par- 
ticiple, as  we  see  from  Dryden's  lines,  — 


300  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

"  By  choice  our  longlived  fathers  earned  their  food, 
Toil  strung  their  nerves  and  purified  their  blood." 

And  in  the  **  Lady  of  the  Lake  "  we  find  a  similar  adjec- 
tive,— 

"  Of  stature  tall  and  slender  frame, 
But  firmly  knit  was  Malcolme  Graeme." 

The  past  participles  of  weak  verbs  are,  in  like  manner, 
made  from  their  past  tenses  by  the  addition  of  d,  which  has 
been  explained  above  ;  where  the  final  d  comes  in  contact 
with  another  hard  consonant,  there  is  at  once  a  tendency 
perceptible  gradually  to  contract  the  full  form  ed  into  t. 
This  is  not  only  the  case  with  nouns  derived  from  partici- 
ples, as  in  gift,  from  what  is  gived,  feint  from  feigtied,  and 
joint  from  joined,  but  even  in  simple  verbal  forms,  as  in 
dealt,  dreamt,  burnt,  meant,  bent,  and  girt.  But  here,  also, 
the  language  is  still  in  a  state  of  transition,  and  lingers  in 
it  all  the  more  readily  because  it  obtains  thus  a  greater 
variety  of  forms,  which  add  to  its  beauty  and  harmony. 
Shakespeare  uses  cast,  but,  also,  in  "  Henry  V.,"  — 

" and  newly  mown 

With  casted  slough  and  fresh  celerity," 

and  our  Bible  version  says  in  verse  13  of  1  Kings  viii :  "  I 
have  surely  built  thee  a  house  to  dwell  in,"  and  in  verse  27 
of  the  same  chapter, "  how  much  less  this  house  that  I  have 
huilded."  There  are  quite  a  number  of  verbs  which  even 
now  hesitate  between  the  fuller  and  the  contracted  form,  as 
lighted  and  lit,  learned  and  learnt,  decked  and  deckt,  tossed  and 
tosst.  In  other  verbs  one  of  the  hard  consonants  has  been 
simply  dropped,  and  thus  we  obtain  the  so-called  irregular 
forms  of  participles,  which  agree  with  the  infinitive,  as  cast, 
hurt,  cost,  and  p7it. 

A  point  much  overlooked,  and  yet  of  great  interest,  is  the 
strange  power  which  our  English  possesses  of  making,  by 
the  mere  force  of  analogy,  past  participles  in  ed  from  nouns, 
even  where  no  verb  of  the  kind  is  or  ever  was  in  existence 
—  a  power  which  may  be  traced  back  to  the  original  force 


LIVING  WORDS.  301 

of  this  c?,  as  derived  from  the  verb  to  do.  Thus  we  have 
moneyed  and  landed  men ;  "  a  \i\y-livered  knave  "  ("  King 
Lear/'  II.  2),  and  hunchhacked,  cock-hrained,  cross-grained^ 
and  henpecked  husbands. 

A  smaller  class  of  past  participles  is  found  in  English, 
derived  from  verbs  by  the  addition  of  that  fertile  source  of 
adjectives,  the  termination  en.  Not  unfrequently  this  form 
is  found  by  the  side  of  that  in  ed,  as  is  the  case  in  the  two 
remarkable  words,  head  and  heaven,  which  are  both  derived 
from  the  Anglo-Saxon  word  heah  (high),  through  the  de- 
rivative verb  heave,  to  put  on  high.  The  mode  of  derivation 
appears  in  remarkable  clearness  in  a  copy  of  the  Bible  of 
the  time  of  Edward  III.,  where  we  read :  "And  I  saw  an 
other  strong  aungel  comynge  down  from  Heuene,  keuerid  or 
clothid  with  a  cloude,  and  the  reynbow  in  his  Heuede." 
(Apocal.  X.  1).  "  Piers  Ploughman  "  also  has,  "  The  Hevedes 
of  holy  churche  and  they  holy  were,  Christe  calleth  hem 
salt." 

Some  of  these  participles  have  been  but  recently  lost, 
for  Milton  still  speaks  of  "  a  foughten  field ; "  and  older 
poets  owed  to  them  much  beauty  and  variety,  as  in  Spen- 
ser's lines,  — 

"  The  barren  ground  was  full  of  wicked  weeds, 

Which  she  herself  had  sowen  all  about 

Now  growen  great  of  little  seeds." 

Where  the  full  forms  are  preserved,  they  add  much  to  the 

richness  of  modern  verse,  and  Wordsworth  makes  the  most 

of  them,  as  in  his  "  Wanderer  :  "  — 

" his  countenance  meanwhile 

Was  hidden  from  my  view,  and  she  remained 
Unrecognized,  but  stricken  by  the  sight 
With  slackened  footsteps  I  advanced." 

Frequently  the  full  forms  have  been  contracted  after  vowels, 
as  in  drawn,  known,  born,  and  thrown  ;  in  other  cases  the 
syllable  is   gradually  disappearing.      Thus  we   still  have 
stolen,  but  hidden  is  slowly  giving  way  to  hid,  l^Jtoumde^ 
now  used  only  with  special  meaning. 


802  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

The  strikingly  small  number  of  forms  to  which  the  Eng- 
lish verb  has  thus  been  gradually  reduced,  would  naturally 
render  it  very  helpless,  and  lead  to  much  obscurity  and  am- 
biguity, if  the  language,  with  its  unfailing  instinct,  had  not 
from  the  beginning  seized  upon  a  remedy.  By  its  adroit 
use  of  the  latter,  it  has  not  only  supplied  the  apparent  want, 
but  actually  added  new  strength  to  its  verbs.  The  ancient 
languages,  it  is  well  known,  expressed  all  the  more  common 
modes  of  action,  existence,  &c.,  by  a  number  of  varied  in- 
flections, and  thus  boasted  of  numerous  tenses  and  moods. 
The  Anglo-Saxon  and  English  verb,  on  the  contrary,  con- 
tents itself  strictly  with  its  primary,  legitimate  duty,  and 
with  genuine  simplicity  claims  to  refer  only  to  state  or 
action.  Hence  its  few  forms.  All  other  modifications  of 
its  meaning  are  expressed  by  the  aid  of  other  verbs,  which 
thus  become,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  auxiliary  verbs. 
By  this,  as  already  Camden  said,  our  English  has  obtained 
a  power,  which  the  ancients,  with  all  their  variety  of  mood 
and  inflection  of  tenses,  could  not  attain.  This  is  so  char- 
acteristic of  the  peculiar  mode  of  thought  of  the  people, 
that  these  auxiliary  verbs,  like  the  personal  pronouns,  have 
ever  remained  purely  Saxon,  and  neither  suffered  modifica- 
tion by  the  Conqueror,  nor  admitted  a  single  Norman-French 
form  to  their  number.  The  only  trace  to  be  found  at  all  of 
French  influence,  is  perhaps  the  use  of  the  verb  to  come, 
with  the  present  participle  ;  "  he  comes  running,"  "  he  came 
staggering,"  being  probably  an  imitation  of  the  French  il 
vint  s'ecriant.  There  is  less  ground  for  supposing  that  the 
combination  of  the  verb  to  have  with  the  verb  to  be,  in  its 
compound  tenses,  was  likewise  due  to  French  influence, 
though  it  is  urged  that  the  French  alone  uses  the  two  verbs 
in  such  manner,  the  other  Romance  languages  having  dif- 
ferent forms,  and  that  the  union  of  to  have  and  to  he  is  not 
met  with  in  writers  before  the  Norman  Conquest. 

The  most  frequent  of  these  auxiliaries  is  also  the  one 
which  has  the  most  general  meaning —  the  verb  to  do.  We 


LIVING  WORDS.  303 

employ  it  continually  for  the  sake  of  emphasis  in  the  pres- 
ent, and  place  it  once  more  before  the  past,  because  the 
original  meaning  of  the  final  d  has  been  lost.  Hence  we 
s?iy  "I  do  love,"  and  "  he  did  say  so."  Good  English  writers 
insist  upon  its  use  in  questions,  so  that  "  did  he  come  ?  " 
takes  the  place  of  "  came  he  ?  "  and' in  negative  sentences, 
where  we  cannot  well  say  "  he  came  not,"  but  substitute  for 
it  "  he  did  not  come." 

The  auxiliary  verb  to  be  is  in  English,  as  in  all  languages, 
one  of  the  most  interesting  and  yet  one  of  the  most  diffi- 
cult to  explain.  In  no  living  language  has  it  preserved  its 
full,  original  form,  but  seems  everywhere  to  have  seized 
upon  such  parts  of  other  verbs  as  could  strengthen  its 
meaning  and  add  to  its  power.  Already  in  the  oldest 
Anglo-Saxon,  in  the  form  in  which  we  first  find  it  written, 
this  verb  shows  by  its  great  variety  of  forms,  that  it  was 
even  then  no  longer  in  a  state  of  original  purity  and  sim- 
plicity, or  it  would  have  been  complete  and  regular  through- 
out, as  €LfXL  was  in  Greek.  It  contained,  instead,  elements 
of  at  least  five  distinct  substantive  verbs,  the  primitive 
terms  of  which  appear  also  in  the  other  languages  of  the 
same  family,  as  is  the  case  with  the  Latin  verb  esse.  This 
striking  identity  of  our  auxiliary  with  certain  forms  of 
ancient  idioms,  presents  us  another  forcible  proof  of  the 
intimate  relationship  existing  between  our  English  and  the 
great  family  of  idioms  with  which  it  claims  kindred.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  must  not  be  overlooked  that  much  of  this 
apparent  identity  remains  yet  unexplained,  and  whilst  the 
result  cannot  be  denied,  the  connection  has  by  no  means 
been  satisfactorily  established  in  all  cases. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  Ic  eom,  our  I  am,  bears  upon  its  face 
evident  proof  of  its  identity  with  the  Greek  el/xL,  and  the 
Latin  sum.  The  second  person  thu  eart,  thou  art,  together 
with  the  plural  form  are,  have,  in  like  manner,  been  traced 
back  to  the  Latin  eram  ;  neither  art  nor  are,  however,  can 
be  called  genuine  Saxon,  and  with  wert  must  be  ascribed  to 


304  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Scandinavian,  probably  Icelandic  influence.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  forms  sy^  seo,  and  stnd,  preserved  in  the  German  sein 
and  its  derivatives,  but  entirely  lost  in  modem  English,  cor- 
responded, thirdly,  with  the  Latin  sum  and  sunt.  I  was  and 
we  were,  belong,  fourthly,  to  an  ancient  verb,  wesan,  Gothic 
visan,  meaning  originally  to  grow,  which  we  have  also  un- 
fortunately lost,  whilst  our  German  neighbors  have  pre- 
served it  not  only  as  a  verb,  but  in  the  form  of  some  of 
their  most  suggestive  nouns.  Not  less  ought  we  to  regret 
the  loss  of  the  many  forms  in  which  the  verb  beon,  our  to 
he,  entered  formerly  into  the  conjugation  of  this  auxiliary. 
Now  we  retain  only  the  infinitive,  and  an  occasional  beest, 
as  in  "  Paradise  Lost,"  L  84,  — 

"  If  thou  beest  he  —  but  0  how  fallen,  how  changed !  '* 
Chaucer's  frequent  use  of  ben  instead  of  are,  as  in   the 

line  — 

"  That  ye  ben  of  my  liflfe  and  dethe  the  quene," 

has  been  rather  violently  imitated  in  Byron's  "  Don  Juan," 
XIIL  26,  — 

"  Also  there  bin  another  pious  reason." 

We  see,  lastly,  in  the  third  person  is  a  beautiful  illustration 
of  the  gradual  curtailment  of  certain  forms,  which  by  con- 
stant use  lose  more  and  more  of  their  substance,  even  as 
small  coins,  in  unceasing  circulation,  soon  have  their  effigy 
and  legend  effaced.  Its  best-known  ancestor  is  the  San- 
scrit astt,  which  reappears  in  the  Zend  esH,  and  the 
Greek  cVrt.  The  last  vowel  disappears  alike  in  the  Gothic 
ist  and  the  Latin  est,  and  their  descendants  on  both 
sides  reduce  it  finally  to  the  present  shortened  form, 
thus:  — 

Gothic,  ist,  Anglo-Saxon,  ys,        Latin,  est,  Spanish,  es, 

German,  ist,         English,  is,  French,  est,         Italian,  e. 

The  use  of  this  verb  as  an  auxiliarj'  is  as  simple  as  it  is 
familiar,  but  there  are  two  ways  in  which  it  occurs  which 
are  more  peculiar  to  English,  and  therefore  deserve  special 
mention.    One  is  the  idiomatic  manner  in  which,  by  its  aid, 


LIVING  WORDS.  305 

English  verbs  express  duration,  or,  as  it  is  sometimes  tech- 
nically called,  "  a  continued  present."  This  is  the  purpose 
of  expressions  like  I  am  reading  and  /  was  saying,  known 
already  to  the  Anglo-Saxon,  and  constituting  one  of  those 
forms  which  give  such  remarkable  precision  for  the  expres- 
sion of  time  to  the  English  verb.  "  I  am  going  to  read," 
or  "  I  was  going  to  speak,"  present  another  of  these  pecu- 
liar forms  by  which  we  convey  the  idea  of  an  immediate 
future,  somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  the  French  je  vais 
lire. 

The  auxiliary  to  have  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  complete  verb, 
and  its  apparent  irregularities  are  nothing  more  than  the 
result  of  gradual  contraction,  such  as  has  taken  place 
throughout  all  parts  of  speech  under  like  circumstances. 
Thus  Chaucer  frequently  uses  the  then  prevailing  form  of 
the  infinitive  to  haven,  but  occasionally  prefers  the  shortened 
form  to  han.  Other  contractions  were  gradually  introduced 
as  we  can  trace  them  from  one  author  to  another,  e.  g.,  — 

Thou  haefest,  haefst,  haest,  hast. 
He  haefeth,  haefth,  hath,  has. 
He  haefde,      haefd,   hadde,  had. 

Several  of  these  auxiliary  verbs  have  for  so  long  served 
only  to  express  certain  fixed  tenses  or  moods,  that  they  are 
no  longer  full  verbs,  and  now  are  used  exclusively  for  one 
or  the  other  meaning.  They  can,  however,  all  be  traced 
back  to  their  once  complete  form.  Such  is  our  /  may, 
derived  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  verb  magan  (German 
mogen),  expressing  the  liberty  of  doing  a  thing.  An- 
ciently it  was  either  I  may  or  I  mow,  and  had  its  regular 
past  tense,  /  mought,  which,  although  now  considered  vul- 
gar and  incorrect,  was  legitimately  used  by  Chaucer,  by 
Fairfax,  and  down  to  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth. Its  ill-regulated  orthography  led,  probably,  most 
directly  to  its  abandonment,  especially  as  one  way  of  spell- 
ing it  produced  no  small  confusion  by  the  resemblance  to 


806  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

another  auxiliary.  This  was  the  form  mote^  as  we  find  it  in 
Spenser's  "  Fairy  Queen,"  11.  9,  18  :  — 

"  She  was  faire  as  faire  mote  ever  be," 

and  in  Fairfax's  "  Tasso,"  III.  13,  — 

"  Within  the  postern  stood  Argantes  stoat 
To  rescue  her,  if  ill  mote  her  betide." 

For  there  was  another  Anglo-Saxon  verb,  motan,  which 
expressed  the  idea  of  necessity,  now  conveyed  by  our  word 
ought.  Its  past  tense,  it  is  said,  which  would  have  been 
mot-ed  or  mot-t,  could,  of  course,  not  be  pronounced,  and 
was  softened  into  most,  the  ancestor  of  our  must,  which  now 
serves  for  past  and  present  alike.  Its  ancient  use  may  be 
gathered  from  Gower's  — 

"  For  as  the  fisse,  if  it  be  dry, 
3/ote,  in  defaute  of  water,  die," 

and  from  Chaucer's  line,  — 

"  Men  m<)8ten  given  silver  to  pore  freres." 
Byron  has  left  us  in  doubt  as  to  the  precise  meaning  which 
he  gives  to  the  word  in,  — 

"  Whatever  this  grief  mote  be,  which  he  could  not  control." 
The  apparently  anomalous  auxiliary  I  ought  is  a  second- 
ary derivation  from  the  Saxon  word  agan  (German  eigen), 
our  modern  to  own.  This  divided,  in  the  past  tense,  into 
/oi/7erfand  I  ought,  with  the  meaning  of  owing  something 
to  duty  or  obligation.     An  old  political  song  has,  — 

"All  England  ahte  for  to  knowe," 
which  shows  us  the  manner  of  derivation,  g  always  chang- 
ing into  h  before  t. 

I  will  has  not  yet  become  quite  obsolete  as  an  indepen- 
dent verb.     Shakespeare  says,  — 

"  He  mils  you  in  the  name  of  God  Almighty," 

and  — 

"She  mlledme  to  leave  my  base  vocation." 
Its  past  tense,  once  /  wtlede,  became  early  /  wolede  (Ger- 
man woUie),   and  this  led  to  the  modern  contraction  I 


LIVING  WORDS.  307 

would,  with  silent  /.  Its  meaning,  so  strikingly  character- 
istic of  the  language,  is  the  combination  of  futurity  and 
volition.  Hence  already  in  Wickliffe's  translation  we  read, 
"I  wolde  ye  schulden  sustaine  a  litil  thing  of  my  unwis- 
dome." 

/  shall,  on  the  contrary,  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  scealan, 
(German  sollen,)  has  a  different  origin  and  meaning.  It 
is  the  oldest  English  form  of  the  future,  and  originally 
meant  to  owe,  for  so  even  Chaucer  uses  it,  saying,  — 

"  For  by  the  faithe  I  shall  to  God." 
In  Scripture  shall  is  also  a  common  form  of  the  future, 
where  ordinary  language,  in  speaking  of  earthly  things, 
would  prefer  will.  When  applied  to  God,  it  conveys,  of 
course,  the  acknowledgment  that  with  Him  the  idea  of 
constraint  is  naturally  excluded ;  hence,  "  Thou  shalt  en- 
dure, and  thy  years  shall  not  change,"  or  "  The  righteous 
shall  hold  on  his  way  and  he  that  hath  clean  hands  shall 
wax  stronger  and  stronger."  They  have  been  well  called 
regular  futures,  uninfluenced  in  form  by  human  fears,  or 
courtesies,  or  doubts.  Elsewhere,  however,  shall  suggests 
rather  futurity,  as  dependent  on  duty  or  necessity,  and 
hence  already  in  Wickliffe,  "  Sothely  the  unwisdome  of 
them  schal  be  knowen  to  alle  men."  This  double  future 
of  the  English,  by  means  of  two  different  verbs,  is  one  of 
the  greatest  beauties  of  the  language.  Used  with  equal 
variety  and  precision,  its  thoroughly  idiomatic  employment 
has  been  gradually  worked  up  to  such  nicety  of  distinction 
and  power  of  expression,  that  it  can  now  be  acquired  only 
by  instinct,  and  is  a  sore  puzzle,  if  not  an  insuperable  diffi- 
culty, to  all  foreigners.  It  must  be  admitted,  that  there  is 
no  absolute  rule  given  by  any  grammarian  that  will  apply 
to  all  cases,  without  leaving  room  for  doubt.  Archdeacon 
Hare  explains  the  law  of  the  future,  after  Jacob  Grimm, 
upon  ethical  grounds,  saying  that  "  when  speaking  in  the 
first  person  we  speak  submissively,  when  speaking  of 
another  we  speak  courteously."     This  is  true  as  far  as  it 


308  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

goes,  but  it  does  not  cover  all  the  ground.  For  /  shall 
can,  by  accent  or  merely  by  the  connection,  be  as  presump- 
tuous as  /  will,  and  you  shall  have  it  is  fully  as  cour- 
teous as  you  will.  As  the  variety  of  meaning  to  be 
expressed  by  the  two  verbs  is  almost  infinite,  there  is  no 
sure  guide  but  that  instinct  which  is  given  to  all  who  learn 
a  language  with  their  mother's  milk,  or  who  acquire  it  so 
successfully  as  to  master  its  spirit  as  well  as  its  form. 

The  auxiliary  I  can,  simple  in  its  meaning,  presents  to 
the  careful  inquirer  a  curious  example  of  the  power  of 
analogy.  Although  a  regular  verb,  it  was  already,  in  the 
days  of  Chaucer,  as  frequently  written  with  an  o  as 
with  an  a,  and  /  cow  and  I  conde  {GevmBXi  konnte),  are 
met  with  as  often  as  /  can.  In  its  use  as  an  auxiliary, 
I  conde  occurred  continually  by  the  side  o^  I  would  and  / 
should,  and  by  the  mere  force  of  analogy  it  also  took  an 
inorganic  I,  which  was  never  pronounced,  as  was  the  case  in 
the  other  two  verbs.  Then  the  letter  n,  unpronounceable 
where  it  stood,  was  dropped,  and  thus  I  conde  became  / 
could.  The  transformation  was  no  doubt  aided  and  accel- 
erated by  a  desire  to  distinguish  it  from  the  similar  to  ken, 
and  its  past  tense,  1  kennede,  (German  kannte,)  which  still 
survives  in  "  not  to  my  ken,"  the  Scotch  canny,  and  our 
cunning. 

A  severe  loss  to  our  English  is  the  giving  up  of  to  weor- 
than,  once  a  full,  regular  verb,  expressive  of  what  is  to  be 
in  the  future,  and  so  eminently  useful  in  German  as  wer- 
den.  In  our  day  it  survives  but  here  and  there,  in  iso- 
lated expressions,  as  when  we  speak  of  the  Parcae,  spinning 
the  Future,  as  "  weird  sisters."  Besides,  we  use  the  Old 
English  ''  way  worth  ye "  in  emphatic  expressions,  as  in 
Chaucer's  imprecation :  — 

"  Wo  worthe  the  fayre  genie  virtutesse, 
Wo  vxyrthe  that  herbe  also  that  doth  no  bote, 
Wo  loorthe  that  is  ruthlesse, 
Wo  toorthe  that  wight  trede  eche  under  fote." 

TroyluB,  III. 


LIVING  WORDS.  309 

Walter  Scott  follows  it  in  his  lines.  — 

"  Wo  worth  the  chase  —  wo  worth  the  day 
That  costs  thy  life,  my  gallant  gray." 

And  even  in  our  Bible  version  occurs,  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord 
God  :  Howl  ye,  Wo  worth  the  day  ! "  (Ezekiel  xxx.  2). 

Another  class  of  verbs  rapidly  going  out  of  use,  and  now 
surviving  only  in  a  few  peculiar  expressions,  are  the  so- 
called  impersonal  verbs.  The  Anglo-Saxon,  especially  in 
its  older  form,  seems  to  have  employed  the  third  person  of 
verbs  with  the  pronoun  in  the  dative,  and  occasionally  in 
the  accusative,  very  frequently,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that 
this  was  done  in  imitation  of  the  Latin  usage.  As  the 
Saxon  gradually  emancipated  itself  from  the  influence  of 
Church-Latin,  these  expressions  became  rarer,  and  were 
soon  limited  almost  exclusively  to  verbs  like  to  think,  to 
seem,  etc.  At  all  events,  these  are  the  only  class  now  used 
with  the  pronoun  in  this  manner.  "  The  Romaunt  of  the 
Rose"  (L  1231),  has,  "Ber  thought  it  all  a  vilaine;"  and 
Gower  says,  — 

"  With  such  gladness  I  daunce  and  skip, 
Me  thinkeih  I  touche  not  the  floor." 

Our  Bible  version  has  frequent  instances,  as,  e.  g.,  2  Sam- 
uel xviii.  27,  "Jfe  thinheth  the  running  of  the  foremost  is 
like  the  nmning  of  Ahimaaz."  In  "  Paradise  Lost  " 
(L  264),  we  find,  — 

"  Him  thought,  he  by  the  brook  of  Cherith  stood." 

And  the  reading  of  "  Richard  III."  (III.  1),  now  altered  to 

it  seems,  was  formerly,  — 

"  Pn«ce.  —  Where  shall  we  sojourn  till  our  coronation  ? 
"  Gloucester.  —  Where  it  thinks  best  unto  your  royal  selfe." 

Even  Pope  does  not  disdain  to  use  it  in  the  linje,  — 

"  One  came,  methought,  and  whispered  in  ray  ear." 

''Me  listeth  "  is  of  still  rarer  occurrence,  and  now  used  only 
in  imitation  of  older  authors,  as  of  Ro.  Brunne's,  — 

"  To  the  holy  land  him  list ;  " 


310  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

and  of  Surrey's  "  Virgil,"  — 

"  To  whatsoever  land, 
By  sliding  seas,  me  listed  them  to  lede." 

The  past  tense  was  formerly  lust  or  lest,  and  hence  is 
derived  the  kindred  verb  to  lust.  Modem  authors,  when 
they  use  such  expressions  at  all,  now  generally  substitute 
me  seems,  as  in  "  Richard  III. "  (III.  2),  — 

"3/e  aeemtih  good  that,  with  some  little  traine, 
Forthwith  from  Ludlow  the  young  prince  be  fetched 
Hither  to  London,  to  be  crowned  our  king." 

Chaucer  has,  — 

"  And  al  that  likith  me,  I  dar  wel  sayn 
It  likith  they 

In  the  dialect  peculiar  to  the  seventeenth  century  we  meet 
frequently  with  the  phrase  "  it  likes  me  well,"  instead  of 
our  modern  "  I  like  it,"  and  hence  the  repeated  occurrence 
in  Shakespeare  of  "  it  dislikes  we,"  ( "  Hamlet,"  V.  2 ; 
"  Othello,"  II.  3),  and  in  "  King  Lear,"  "  His  countenance 
likes  me  not." 

This  peculiar  use  of  so-called  impersonal  verbs  must, 
however,  be  well  distinguished  from  the  mere  expletive  use 
of  the  pronoun,  often  called  "  Dativus  Ethicus,"  and  not  as 
Gould  Brown  has  it,  "  a  faulty  relic  of  our  old  Saxon  dative 
case."  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  legitimate  use  made  of  the 
same  pronoun  in  all  modern  languages,  giving  great  force 
and  even  occasional  elegance  to  certain  expressions,  which, 
we  fear,  is  unnecessarily  neglected  by  modern  writers. 
Shakespeare  knew  well  how  to  use  it  with  effect,  as  when 
he  says,  — 

"  She  leans  me  out  of  her  mistress'  chamber  window, 
And  bids  me  thousand  times  good  night," 

and  in  another  place,  — 

•'  He  presently,  as  greatness  knows  itself, 
Steps  me  a  little  higher  than  his  son. 
Made  to  my  father  while  his  blood  was  poor," 

and  even  the  "  Spectator "  still  says,  "  A  Jew  eat  me  up 
half  a  ham  of  bacon." 


LIVING  WORDS.  311 

These  expletive  pronouns  must,  of  course,  be  read  unem- 
phatic  and  without  accent,  or  they  lead  to  sad  misunder- 
standing, as  in  the  well-known  instance  from  the  Bible, 
"  And  he  said,  Saddle  me  the  ass,  and  they  saddled  him" 

This  use  of  the  pronoun  occurs,  also,  in  the  cases  where 
it  is  employed  merely  as  an  expletive,  without  reference  to 
a  particular  thing,  as  in  Milton's  lines,  — 

"  Not  lording  it  over  God's  heritage," 
and  — 

"  Come  and  trip  it  as  jou  go," 

and  in  Shakespeare,  — 

"  I  'II  queen  it  no  inch  farther,"  ( Winter's  Tale^  IV.  3.) 

and  even  — 

"  I  come  to  wive  if."  ( Taming  the  8hrew^  I.  2). 


CHAPTER  XVL 

ADVERBS. 

«  Omnis  pars  oratlonia  migrat  in  adverbum." 

In  the  society  of  every  country  we  meet,  occasionally, 
with  adventurers  of  unknown  origin,  whose  place  is  as  un- 
certain as  their  claims  are  vague,  and  who  yet,  because  of 
some  useful  quality,  or  on  account  of  the  respect  paid  to 
established  usage,  are  tolerated  and  entertained.  In  like 
manner,  we  find  that  every  language  also  has  its  adven- 
turers, words  of  more  or  less  obscure  descent,  belonging  to 
no  one  of  the  regularly  defined  classes  of  nouns  or  verbs, 
subject  to  no  laws  and  rules,  and  yet  not  only  incorporated 
in  the  idiom  but  always  of  undeniable  importance.  This 
exceptional,  and  generally  ill-treated  class  of  words,  we  call, 
after  the  fashion  of  ancient  grammarians,  adverbs.  For 
already  the  old  Latin  writers,  whenever  a  word  was  found 
to  be  established  in  use  which  differed  from  its  ordinary 
manner  of  signifying,  thrust  it  aside  into  the  class  of  ad- 
verbs. Home  Tooke,  with  his  usual  bluntness,  went  still 
further,  and  called  them  "  the  common  sink  and  repository 
of  all  heterogeneous  and  unknown  corruptions."  This  view 
was  long  considered  so  satisfactory  and,  we  apprehend, 
especially  so  convenient,  that  but  little  attention  was  given 
to  these  pariahs,  and  they  were  allowed  to  hide  in  dark 
corners  and  to  lose  daily  more  of  their  original  substance 
and  appearance.  When,  at  last,  the  attention  of  learned 
men  was  drawn  to  these  unfortunate  words,  they  were  made 
the  sport  of  every  scribbler,  and  especially  of — 


ADVERBS.  313 

"  Those  learned  philologists  who  chase 
A  panting  syllable  through  time  and  space, 
Start  it  at  home  and  hunt  it,  in  the  dark, 
To  Gaul  —  to  Greece  —  and  into  Noah's  ark." 

Even  the  more  exhaustins  research  and  the  more  cautious 
investigations  of  modern  linguists  have  but  imperfectly  suc- 
ceeded in  restoring  order  to  this  lumber-room  of  our  lan- 
guage. All  we  know  with  certainty  is,  that  in  form  the 
adverbs  are,  almost  without  exception,  abbreviations  and 
often  corruptions  of  other  parts  of  speech,  and  that  in 
meaning  they  denote  qualities  which  do  not  belong  to 
objects  (nouns),  but  rather  to  actions,  etc.  (verbs).  Hence 
their  one  unchaqging  peculiarity,  common  to  all,  that  they 
cannot  be  joined  to  a  noun,  but  only  to  verbs,  and,  through 
them,  to  adjectives  and  other  adverbs,  as  when  we  say, 
"  The  orator  spoke  fluently  but  not  well,"  or,  "  She  was  ex- 
ceedingly fair,"  and  "  He  looks  uncommonly  badly."  As  it 
cannot  stand  alone,  but  must  needs  be  accompanied  by  a 
verb,  it  received  in  ancient  Greece  its  name  of  iirLpprjixa, 
and  in  Latin  was  called  an  adverb. 

Our  English  adverbs,  also,  as  far  as  we  have  been  able 
to  trace  them  to  their  first  origin,  are  but  remnants  and 
degenerate  forms  of  other  parts  of  speech,  and  owe  their 
descent,  without  exception,  to  other  classes  of  words. 

Nouns  furnish  us  numerous  adverbs,  generally  in  the 
form  of  the  genitive  in  s,  which  early  became  so  character- 
istic a  mark  of  the  adverbial  use  of  a  noun  that,  although 
originally  belonging  to  masculines  only,  it  was  soon  added 
to  feminine  nouns  also.  When  we  say,  "  It  must  needs  be," 
we  employ  the  genitive  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  noun  need, 
originally  neades.  The  noun  way  has  thus  furnished  us 
with  quite  a  number  of  adverbs,  in  which,  however,  the 
word  wise  is  occasionally  mistaken  for  ways.  Thus  the 
familiar  longways  is,  strictly  speaking,  derived  and  often 
actually  written  longwise,  as  derived  from  the  old  wise 
for  guise,  used,  e.  g.,  in  our  Bible  version :  "  The  birth  of 


314  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Jesus  Christ  was  on  this  wiseJ*  Always  and  noways  are, 
however,  legitimate  descendants  of  way ;  so,  also,  straight- 
ways,  sideways,  lengthways,  endways,  the  rarer  '•^anyways 
afflicted  "  in  our  '*  Common  Prayer,"  and  the  "  come  a  little 
nearer  iYAsways  "  of  Shakespeare,  ("  Merry  Wives,"  II.  2). 
"  Day  "  has  furnished  us  the  modern  nowadays,  formerly 
written  as  in  "  Douglas," — 

"  But  certainly,  the  dasit  blude  now  on  dayes 
Waxis  dolf  and  dull  throw  myne  unweildy  age." 

"  While  "  has  given  us  whiles,  shown  in  its  old  meaning  in 
Shakespeare's  "  Much  Ado,"' — 

"  She  died,  my  lord,  but  whiles  her  slander  liv'd," 

and  now  not  unfrequently  augmented,  by  mere  force  of 
analogy,  into  whilst.  Amidships  and  athwartships  are  well- 
known  forms  of  this  class,  but  perhaps  is  less  familiar  as  to 
its  derivation,  as  we  have  lost  the  old  noun  hap,  or  happe, 
used  thus  in  Gower,  — 

"  The  happes  ouer  mannes  hede, 
Ben  honged  with  a  tender  threde." 

Scotch  dialects  abound  in  similar  formations,  rarely  heard 
south  of  the  Tweed,  as  landgates,  haufgates  (halfway),  gee- 
ways  (bias),  nextways,  and  landways.  In  "Hudibras"  we 
meet  with  the  quaint  word  anothergates. 

The  dative  of  nouns  has  furnished  but  few  adverbs  now 
in  use.  Generally  it  is  the  dative  plural,  which  thus  sur- 
vives from  the  early  days  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  in  the  whilom 
from  while,  seldom  from  seld,  still  used  thus  by  Shakespeare, 
and  piecemeal,  which  has  now  lost  its  termination  but  was 
formerly  piecemealum.  Rarely  do  we  meet  with  the  da- 
tive singular,  and  then  always  with  the  feminine,  as  in  ever, 
from  Anglo-Saxon  efe,  anciently  written  aefere,  and  its 
negative  form  never.  Athwart,  then,  and  when,  are  looked 
upon  by  many  as  accusatives,  and  why,  how,  and  thus,  as 
ablatives. 

A  much  more  numerous  class  of   adverbs  has  been 


ADVERBS.  315 

derived  from  nouns  by  means  of  additional  prepositions, 
which  have  not  unfrequently  been  incorporated  with  the 
adverb  in  our  day.  In  thus  forms  words  like  indeed^  in 
fact,  in  truth  ;  to  makes  to-day ,  to-night,  to-morrow  ;  at  fur- 
nishes at  length,  at  times,  at  will ;  hy,  now  but  rarely  used 
in  its  full  form,  as  in  hy  rights,  is  generally  shortened  into 
he,  as  in  hetimes,  hesides,  and  the  rarer  — 

"  Belike  they  had  some  notice  of  the  people."  — Julius  Ccesar,  II.  2. 

In  like  manner  have  been  derived  of  course,  forsooth,  up- 
stairs, and  even  the  French  per  had  to  furnish  peradven- 
twre,  and  — 

"  G&a.\XQ9,  perchance,  ye  wonder  at  this  show." 

Midsummer  NighVs  Dream,  V.  1. 

In  Old  English  the  preposition  on  seems  to  have  been 
of  all  the  most  generally  used,  but  its  very  frequency  has 
led  to  its  almost  constant  abbreviation  in  a  or  o.  Thus, 
what  was  in  older  authors  on  righte,  on  gemang,  on  haec, 
on  veg,  and  on  gegen,  is  now  aright,  among,  ahack,  away, 
and  again,  and  in  accordance  with  these  forms  new  ones 
have  been  made,  like  ahed,  aboard,  abreast,  and  alofi.  Our 
modern  o'clock  is  an  instance  of  the  change  of  on  into  sim- 
ple o,  which  was  formerly  more  frequent,  as  we  may  see 
from  the  line  in  "  Julius  Caesar,"  — 

"  Such  as  sleep  o'm^Ate." 

It  seems  that  in  the  older  stages  of  the  language  the 
nice  difference  of  meaning  which  now  exists  between  on 
and  in  became  less  distinct,  and  people  using  the  one  for 
the  other,  they  were  all  represented  by  on,  un,  an,  or  in, 
and  in  composition  by  the  shorter  forms  of  simple  a  or  o. 
The  former,  especially,  whatever  may  have  been  its  first 
origin  and  meaning,  was  already  in  Anglo-Saxon  used  with 
apparent  caprice,  being  now  added  and  now  omitted.  As 
far  as  we  can  judge  in  a  matter  so  entirely  dependent  on 
the  taste  or  the  fashion  of  the  time,  it  seems  to  have  been 
mainly  used  to  add  expressiveness  to  all  words  of  an  emo- 


316  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

tional  character,  like  awake,  ajoy,  etc.     Hence  its  frequent 
and  powerful  use  in  Shakespeare,  as,  — 

"  For  Cassius  is  aweary  of  the  world."  —  Julius  Ccesar. 
^  I  'gin  to  be  aweary  of  the  sun."  —  Macbeth. 
"  Tom  's  acold."  — Kinff  Lear. 

The  same  explanation  applies,  probably,  to  the  fuller  form 
an,  (so  often  met  with  in  our  Bible  version,  as  in  the  wprds, 
"  When  I  was  an  hungered,")  before  vowels  and  the  letter 
h.  That  even  now  the  use  of  this  adverbial  prefix  depends 
more  on  caprice  than  on  any  rule,  appears  from  the  fact 
that  many  words  which  formerly  had  it,  are  now  used  with- 
out it,  whilst  others  have  assumed  it  only  in  modern  times. 
Adjectives  have  furnished  us  with  adverbs  by  similar 
changes.  In  some  cases  it  is  here  also  the  genitive  in  s, 
which  is  employed  for  the  purpose.  Hence,  e.  g.,  our  else, 
formerly  elles,  which  curiously  coincides  with  the  Greek 
dXXws  and  the  Latin  alias.    In  Ritson's   "  Ballads "  we 

find, — 

"  And  eUea  I  swere  withouten  fayle." 
Chaucer  has  — 

"  Te  Deum  was  one  songe  and  nothyng  eWes,"  (Sumptner's  Tale,  43.) 
and  in  the  "  Reve's  Tale  "  (16),  — 

*  Or  eb  he  is  a  fool,  as  clerkes  sayn," 
showing  the  gradual  process  of  abbreviation.  Eftsoons^ 
which  still  occurs  in  Shakespeare,  is  now  entirely  out  of 
use,  but  unawares  and  all  the  compounds  with  "  ward,"  as 
upwards,  homewards,  backwards,  towards,  and  afterwards, 
were  adverbs  already  in  Anglo-Saxon,  and  are  not,  as  John- 
son says,  "  less  correct  forms." 

Other  adjectives  give  us  adverbs  by  adding  the  compar- 
ative form  -er,  a  process  which  is  used  in  all  languages  for 
the  purpose  of  making  adverbs  of  locality.  The  Greek 
had  its  TrpoTipos,  fVTipov,  and  i^ompo^,  from  Trpo,  ev,  and 
€$ii) ;  the  Latin  its  prior  from  pro,  inter  from  in,  exterior 
and  exterus  from  ex,  suhter,  prceter,  posterus,  and  obiter. 
The  corresponding  forms  in  our  English  are  inner,  upper, 
outer  or  utter,  yonder,  and  many  others. 


ADVERBS.  317 

It  is  another  peculiarity  of  our  idiom  that  many  adjec- 
tives are  used  as  adverbs  without  any  change  of  form. 
Generally  we  now  obtain  adverbs  from  adjectives  by  the 
ordinary  method  of  adding  -ly  to  the  latter,  but  many  of 
these  show  a  mysterious  reluctance  to  take  this  termination. 
In  cases  like  illy  and  stilly,  the  objection  might  be  explained 
by  the  unpleasant  accumtulation  of  /;  in  most  instances, 
however,  it  is  simply  felt  but  cannot  be  explained,  though 
not  unfrequently  it  is  overruled  by  individual  taste  or  pref- 
erence. We  speak  thus  of  selling  cheap  and  dear,  although 
we  may  ^scy  dearly  ;  we  say  to  piny  fair,  to  fallj^a^,  to  labor 
hard,  to  write  close,  to  come  late,  to  wait  lony,  to  speak  loud 
or  low,  to  run  quick,  and  to  stop  short.  We  go  even  further 
than  that,  and  say  full  well,  pretty  good,  and  wide  open ; 
though  Hume's  "  the  people  are  miserable  poor,"  and  the 
"  Spectator's "  "  How  unworthy  you  treated  mankind," 
would  not  now  be  considered  correct.  Shakespeare's 
^^indifferent  well,"  and  Butler's  '^wonderful  silly,"  would 
no  longer  be  tolerated.  With  all  this  diversity  of  taste 
there  is  no  rule  limiting  the  adverbial  use  of  these  adjec- 
tives. The  only  point  which  they  have  in  common  is  that 
they  are  all  original  Anglo-Saxon  adjectives,  not  one  of 
French  origin  being  thus  used  unchanged.  It  may  be 
added  that,  in  modern  style,  the  adjective  is  considered  as 
giving  greater  force  than  the  derivative  adverb.  Thus  we 
find  in  Gray, — 

"  Full  many  a  gem  of  purest  ray  serene," 
and  we  read  — 

"  Drink  deep  or  taste  not  the  Pierian  spring," 
in  Pope,  and  — 

"  Science  by  thee  flows  sqfl,  in  social  ease. 
And  virtue,  losing  rigor,  loves  to  please," 

in  Savage,  and  in  Milton  — 

"  As  when  the  sun,  new  risen. 
Looks  through  the  misty,  horizontal  air 
Shorn  of  his  beams." 


31S  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  constant  use  of  adjectives 
as  adverbs,  without  any  apparent  change  of  form,  had  its 
origin  in  the  fact  that  in  Anglo-Saxon  and  in  Old  English 
adverbs  were  very  commonly  made  from  adjectives  by  the 
simple  addition  of  an  e.  It  matters  not  whether  this  letter 
was  the  old  ablative  ending,  as  some  maintain,  or  had 
already  then  lost  its  primary  power,  and  merely  served  to 
distinguish  adverbs.  This  only  is  certain  —  that  the  ad- 
verbial e  shared  the  fate  of  almost  all  final  c's,  and  was 
quietly  dropped  in  the  course  of  time,  so  as  to  reduce 
adjective  and  adverb  alike  to  the  same  form. 

Some  of  these  adverbs  we  can  clearly  trace  through  Old 
English  writings,  e.  g.,  we  say  "  The  thing  is  clean  gone,*' 
from  the  old  adverb  clcene  which  meant  entirely.  In  like 
manner  the  Anglo-Saxon  adverbs  hearde,  hlydde,  rihte^ 
and  wide,  have  given  us  our  expressions,  "  he  rode  hard'' 
"  she  spoke  loud, "  "  it  was  done  right  well,"  and  "  the  door 
is  wide  open."  An  additional  evidence  of  this  explana- 
tion is  found  in  the  ample  use  which  poets  make  of  such 
simple  adverbs,  from  the  preference  they  naturally  give  to 
antique  forms,  while  in  prose  the  fuller  and  more  modem 
form  in  -ly  is  more  common. 

The  fact  is,  however,  that  in  this  and  similar  matters  the 
established  usage  has,  in  English,  a  force  far  greater  than 
any  law  or  rule.  It  constitutes  the  idiom,  in  the  true  sense 
of  that  word.  There  is  no  explanation  needed  for  what  is 
sanctioned  by  usage,  for  to  alter  it  would  involve  the  neces- 
sity of  altering  the  mode  of  thought  —  the  whole  mind  of 
the  nation.  We  cannot  change,  by  any  force  of  reasoning, 
the  smallest  rule  in  English.  There  is,  for  instance,  no 
apparent  reason  why  the  two  words  very  and  rrnich  should 
not  be  used  in  the  same  manner,  or  exchanged  the  one  for 
the  other,  and  yet  it  cannot  be  done.  We  may  say  "  I  am 
very  happy  to  see  you,"  but  not  "  I  am  much  happy."  On 
the  other  hand  we  may  say,  "  I  am  much  misunderstood  " 
(or  mistaken),  but  not  "  I  am  very  mistaken."   Max  Miiller, 


ADVERBS.  319 

noticing  a  change  in  this  rule  which  is  taking  place  in 
this  country,  where  "  I  am  very  pleased,"  and  like  expres- 
sions, are  beginning  to  prevail,  ascribes  it  to  an  inner 
necessity,  a  development  of  the  language.  It  would  seem, 
however,  as  if  it  were  rather  the  change  in  the  way  of 
thinking  which  distinguishes  the  Englishman  from  the 
American.  The  tendency  with  the  former  is  to  worship 
wealth  and  to  revel  in  rich  colors,  rich  stories,  and  rich 
exposures ;  the  latter  is,  as  yet,  more  struck  with  power, 
and  hence  dwells  upon  a  strong  likeness,  a  powerful  speech, 
and  an  almighty  dollar.  Thus  he  comes  to  prefer  very^  as 
suggestive  of  vigor,  to  much,  as  expressive  of  abundance 
and  wealth. 

Numerals  produce  adverbs  like  adjectives,  through  the 
genitive  form,  and  give  us  thus  once  instead  of  ones,  which, 
although  not  found  in  Anglo-Saxon,  was  probably  common 
in  early  dialects,  as  it  occurs  so  frequently  in  old  authors. 
Chaucer  says  in  the  "  Knight's  Tale,"  — 

"  Ye  wote  your  selfe,  she  may  not  wedde  two  at  ones^ 

and  in  the  "  Nonne's  Priest,"  — 

"  And  first  I  shrew  myself,  both  blode'and  bones, 
If  thou  begyle  me  ofter  than  ones.''^ 

The  frequent  use  of  this  word  ones  with  a  demonstrative 
than  before  it,  has  led  to  the  contraction  of  the  two  words 
into  one,  after  the  same  manner  in  which  nadder  has  come 
from  an  adder,  and  newt  from  an  eft.  Thus  in  Madden's 
"  Glossary  to  Gawan,"  we  still  find  the  forms  separate,  "  for 
than  ones,''  but  afterwards  they  were  contracted,  and  pro- 
duced our  English  word  nonce,  now  commonly  used  only  in 
the  phrase,  " for  the  nonce'' 

Twice  and  thrice  are  formed  in  the  same  way,  as  we  may 
see  again  in  Chaucer,  — 

"  That  had  been  itoies  hot  and  iwies  cold," 

and  — 

" He hadde  foughten  in  listes  ihries*^ 


820  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

These  words  are  but  so  many  additional  proofs  of  the  gen- 
eral tendency  of  English  to  shorten,  and  in  the  process, 
also,  to  harden  ies  into  ice,  which  has  already  been  remarked 
upon  in  the  'formation  of  the  plural,  where  mies  became 
mice,  dies,  dice,  and  pennies,  pence.  But  what  is  more  re- 
markable still,  is  the  analogous  formation  of  adverbs  from 
the  genitive  of  personal  pronouns,  a  derivation  so  little  ap- 
parent in  the  modern  form  of  the  adverbs  as  to  be  continu- 
ally overlooked.  The  Anglo-Saxon  hen,  still  used  in  Lin- 
colnshire, made  formerly  its  genitive  in  hennes  ;  this  Chau- 
cer shortens  in  "  Hens  over  a  mile,"  and  now  we  write  it 
hmce.  "Piers  Ploughman"  (19)  speaks  of  "Ere  she 
thennes  yede,"  which  gave  us  our  thence ;  and  whence  is 
formed  in  like  manner.  Following,  however,  the  example 
of  adjectives,  the  pronouns  also  make  adverbs  in  three 
ways :  the  genitive  masculine  in  es,  now  shortened  into  ce 
with  silent  e,  the  genitive  feminine  in  er,  and  the  compara- 
tive termination,  thus  furnishing  us  with  three  classes  of 
adverbs,  corresponding  to  the  above-mentioned  three  classes 
of  pronouns :  — 

where, 

whence, 

whither, 

when, 

why, 

thus 

though  ( German  doch),  (w)how. 

Verbs  furnish  but  few  adverbs,  and  only  such  as  are  either 
simple  forms  of  the  verb  itself,  or  gradually  becoming  ob- 
solete. Such  are  our  familiar  may  he,  for  perhaps,  and 
"  Mayhap  you  will  do  more  "  (Tom  Jones,  III.  28).  The 
once  very  popular  to  wit  is  now  hardly  used,  except  in  pub- 
lic or  legal  documents,  and  so  are  albeit  and  howbeit.  Not- 
withstanding is  of  all  verbal  adverbs,  in  spite  of  its  awk^ 
ward  length,  the  most  generally  used  in  our  day. 

A  class  of  adverbs  marked  by  striking  peculiarities  in  all 
languages,  and  not  least  so  in  our  English,  contains  the 


here, 

there, 

hence, 

thence, 

hither, 

thither, 

*™JM.S.a.enno), 

ADVERBS.  321 

words  used  for  negation  and  affirmation.  One  of  the  char- 
acteristic features  is,  that  almost  all  languages  possessed 
originally  two  forms  for  both,  like  the  Greek, ou  and  iirj,  of 
which  one  has  gradually  disappeared.  Our  French  neigh- 
bors distinguish  to  this  day  carefully  between  their  si  and 
oui,  and  so  do  the  Swedes,  but  most  of  the  European  idioms 
now  employ  but  one.  Our  Saxon  fathers  also  had  two  neg- 
ative and  two  affirmative  forms,  which  have  not  yet  alto- 
gether disappeared  from  modern  English.  The  former 
were  na,  which  has  given  as  our  no  and  neither,  and  ne,  our 
not.  The  difference,  according  to  our  usage,  however,  is  not 
the  same  as  of  old ;  now  we  employ  no  to  express  a  nega- 
tive of  things,  and  not  of  actions,  as  when  we  say,  "  He  has 
no  money,"  being  in  reality  used  as  an  adjective,  and  not  as 
an  adverb.  But  in  the  phrase  "  He  has  not  money  enough," 
we  use  the  verb  negatively,  and  therefore  employ  a  gen- 
uine adverb.  Old  English  authors  frequently  substituted 
7iaye  for  not,  a  word  the  origin  of  which  is  by  no  means  satis- 
factorily explained.  Those  who  consider  aye  to  be  derived 
from  the  French  aye  and  ayez,  go  so  far  as  to  presuppose 
already  a  French  n'aye,  which  might  have  crept  into  our 
English  with  other  Norman  French  importations.  Others 
trace  our  aye  simply  back  to  the  aye,  explained  before, 
which  we  use  for  always,  and  these  see  in  naye  merely  a 
contraction  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  ne  with  it,  as  if  meaning 
not  always.  It  is,  however,  certain  that  the  word  was  at  an 
early  period  already  spelt  n^aye.  All  the  older  writers  are 
very  careful  in  observing  the  distinction  between  these  two 
negatives,  using  no  in  reply  to  negative,  and  nay  in  reply  to 
affirmative  questions,  in  precisely  the  same  manner  in  which 
the  French  oui  and  si  are  employed.  Sir  Thomas  More  in 
his  "  Confutation  of  Tyndale  "  (448)  explains  the  use  very 
explicitly,  thus  :  "  If  a  manne  should  aske  Tindale  hym- 
selfe :  Is  an  heretike  mete  to  translate  Holy  Scripture  into 
English  ?  To  this  question,  if  he  will  answer  trewe,  he 
must  aunswere  Nay  and  not  No.     But  and  if  the  question 

21 


322  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

be  asked  hym  thus  lo  :  Is  not  an  heretique  mete,  &c.  To 
this  question,  if  he  will  aunswer  true  English,  he  must 
aunswer  No  and  not  Nay."  A  small  matter,  one  might 
imagine,  to  reproach  Tyndale  with  in  a  work  of  such  vast 
importance,  but  showing  the  great  weight  given  to  the  use 
of  these  negatives  in  the  days  of  yore. 

Our  not  is  more  easily  traced  back  to  its  first  descent.  It 
is  a  compound,  consisting  of  the  negative  ne,  and  the  old 
word  viht  or  wiht.  The  latter  meant  originally  any  thing 
that  really  exists,  a  creature,  and  is  the  same,  in  form,  as 
our  modern  wight,  which  we,  however,  only  use  for  a  man. 
But  the  Anglo-Saxon  viht  was  also  the  same  as  whit,  and 
when  we  now  say  " not  a  whit"  or,  as  in  Shakespeare's 
"Julius  Caesar,"  — 

"  Oui:  youth  and  wildness  shall  no  whit  appear," 

we  use  it  exactly  in  the  old  sense  of  not  any  thing,  not  at 
all.  From  such  a  very  general  meaning,  suggesting  any 
created  being  in  the  vaguest  sense,  it  seems  to  have  come 
to  signify,  after  a  time,  an  elf  or  other  uncanny  being.  In 
this  sense  it  occurs  in  the  "  Miller's  Tale,"  — 
"  I  crouch  thee  from  elves  and  from  vnghts." 

The  next  step,  no  doubt,  was  to  lose  sight  of  the  feature  of 
life  in  these  beings,  and  wight  was  employed  to  express  any 
thing,  somewhat  after  the  manner  in  which  the  French  rien 
is  derived  from  the  Latin  rejn.  The  word,  by  itself,  is  un- 
fortunately going  out  of  use,  and  our  English  is  thus  de- 
prived of  a  term  of  original,  simple  force,  the  loss  of  which 
is  much  to  be  regretted.  We  generally  substitute  for  it 
nowadays  the  Latin  persona,  a  person,  which  originally 
meant  in  English  not  a  man  but  a  mask,  and  is  still  used 
so  on  play-bills.  Quite  recently  a  still  worse  expression  has 
intruded  itself  into  good  society  in  the  word  individual, 
which  suggests  no  clear  idea  to  the  mass  of  the  people,  and 
when  used  to  designate  biblical  characters,  or  the  Saviour 
himself,  as  is  frequently  the  case  in  our  churches,  sounds 


ADVERBS.  323 

almost  irreverent.  It  is  a  pity  that  so  few  of  us  remember 
and  follow  the  excellent  advice  given  by  the  author  of 
"  Guesses  at  Truth  : "  "  When  you  doubt  between  two  words, 
choose  the  plainest,  the  commonest,  the  most  idiomatic. 
Eschew  fine  words  as  you  would  rouge,  love  simple  ones  as 
you  would  native  roses  on  your  cheek ! "  Measured  by  such 
a  standard,  how  absurd  appears  the  individual  by  the  side 
of  the  poor  wight ! 

It  was  in  this  very  general  meaning  o^any  thing ^  probably, 
that  the  negative  ne  was  first  added  to  viht,  and  thus  pro- 
duced by  the  side  of  the  still  surviving  aught  the  compound 
form  naught,  which  was  finally  shortened  into  not.  Chau- 
cer retains  the  original  word,  e.  g.,  in  "  There  is  no  wight 
that  hath  soverein  bounte  save  God  alone."  Soon  afler  the 
more  recent  form  appears  very  generally,  and  is  still  occa- 
sionally used,  mainly  in  poetical  language.  Thus  T.  H. 
Bailey  says :  — 

"  But  should  ciught  impious  or  impure 
Take  friendship's  name,  reject  and  shun  it." 

Longfellow  has,  — 

"  Naught  else  have  we  to  give," 

as  already  our  Bible  version  used  it  (Proverbs  xx.  14), 

"  It  is  naught,  it  is  naught,  saith  the  buyer :  but  when  he  is 

gone  his  way,  then  he  boasteth."    In  Milton's  "  Paradise 

Lost"  the  word  is  rather  a  favorite,  as  e.  g., — 

"  Nor  aught  avails  him  now 
To  have  built  in  heaven  high  towers." 

It  is  probably  'little  more  than  a  caprice  of  the  idiom,  that 
our  modern  English  requires  the  aid  of  the  auxiliary  to  do, 
with  negative  verbs.  Older  writers  knew  of  no  such  rule ; 
Shakespeare  says  simply  "  she  not  denies  it,"  and  Dryden 
has,  "  I  not  offend."  Now,  however,  not  is  admissible  by 
itself  6nly  afler  the  verb,  and  then  only  in  very  emphatic 
expressions,  as  when  we  say  "  I  will  not,^'  or  "  I  went  not." 
The  Anglo-Saxon  had,  as  the  Romance  languages  now 


324  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

have,  a  so-called  double  negative,  using  this  not  in  conjunc- 
tion with  other  negative  adverbs.  This  is  no  longer  admis- 
sible, though  occasionally  occurring.  Chaucer  follows  the 
old  usage  in  — 

"  He  nefcer  yet  no  vilainee  ne  sayde." 
In  Dayton's  "  Nymphidia  "  we  find,  — 

"  She  mounts  her  chariot  in  a  trice, 
Nor  would  she  stay  for  ru)  advice, 
Until  her  maids  who  were  so  nice 
To  wait  on  her  were  fitted." 

Shakespeare  makes  frequent  use  of  this  peculiar  kind  of 
"  strong  language."    In  "  Richard  II."  he  says : "  — 

"  I  never  was  nor  never  will  be  false," 
in  "  Measure  for  Measure,"  — 

"  Harp  not  on  that  nor  do  not  banish  reason 
For  incredulity;  " 

and  in  "Romeo  and  Juliet"  (IV.  11)  we  read  of — 

"  a  sudden  day  of  joy 
That  thou  expectedst  not,  nor  I  looked  not  for." 

The  English  possessed  of  old  the  same  power  which  pro- 
duced so  remarkable  results  in  the  ancient  languages,  of 
uniting  the  negative  {ne)  with  those  words  to  which  it  ap- 
plied most  directly.  This  was  of  constant  occurrence  when 
the  latter  commenced  either  with  h  or  with  w  —  letters  of 
such  faint  sound  and  fleeting  import  that  they  were  easily 
lost  under,  the  sterner  influence  of  the  negative.  Follow- 
ing thus  the  example  of  the  Latin  in  nemo^  from  ne-homo, 
the  Anglo-Saxon  had  naebbe,  from  ne-haebbe ;  as  nuUus 
arose  from  ne-uUus,  so  did  nys  from  ne-is  ;  and  as  nolo  from 
ne-volo,  so  naes  from  ne-waes.  Our  German  cousin  also  has, 
by  the  same  process,  Niemand  and  Jemand,  Nein  and  Ein, 
Nirgends  and  Irgends,  Niemals  and  Jemals.  Older  authors 
still  present  us  occasionally  with  the  contraction  of  ne  and 
wiUan,  as  in  Wicklifle's  translation  (Judges  xviii.  9),  — 
"  WyU  ye  be  negligent,  mlyQ  ceese," 


ADVERBS.  325 

and  Sylvester  says,  as  late  as  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 

century,  — 

"  Who  nill  be  subjects  shall  be  slaves  in  fine." 

Chaucer  had  a  long  list  of  similar  forms,  which,  to  the 
injury  of  the  language,  have  since  been  lost,  as  nis,  nam, 
niste,  and  nadde.  Our  modern  English  retains  a  few,  as 
naught  and  never,  none  and  neither  ;  others,  now  out  of  use, 
might,  we  think,  be  profitably  and  easily  recovered,  as  the 
process  of  thus  prefixing  ne  is  by  no  means  repugnant  to 
the  language,  and  the  meaning  of  the  negative  has  not  been 
dimmed  by  long  oblivion  as  that  of  other  similar  particles. 
A  few  expressions  of  this  class  are  often  instinctively  used, 
the  speaker  having  no  very  clear  idea  of  the  origin,  nor 
perhaps  of  the  precise  meaning  of  the  words  themselves 
Thus  willy-nilly  is  simply  the  old  will  he  nill  he,  after  the 
manner  of  the  Latin  nolens-volens,  and  survives  at  least  as 
a  familiar  phrase.  The  great  Wesley  once  tried  to  revive 
its  original  form  and  force,  and  said  :  "  Man  wills  something 
because  it  is  pleasing  to  nature,  and  he  niUs  something 
because  it  is  contrary  to  nature,"  but  for  some  reason  or 
other  he  found  no  imitators.  Our  hob-nob,  also,  suggests 
but  to  the  few  learned  in  ancient  lore,  its  derivation  from 
haeh  naeh,  used  from  of  old  convivially,  when  asking  a  per- 
son whether  he  will  have  or  not  have  a  glass  of  wine. 
Hence  its  present  use  as  a  verb,  though  Shakespeare  seems 
to  have  been  accustomed  to  the  word  in  a  larger  meaning, 
for  he  translates  it  as  it  were  in  these  lines,  ("  Twelfth 
Night,"  III.  4,)  ''And  his  incensement  at  this  moment  is  so- 
implacable  that  satisfaction  can  be  now  but  by  pangs  of 
death  and  sepulchre  ;  hob-nob  is  his  word,  give 't  or  take 't." 
Modern  English  seems  to  have  a  tendency  of  contracting 
words  with  the  negative  at  the  end,  rather  than  at  the  be- 
ginning. Hence  our  familiar  Iwo'nt  and  I  dd'nt.  These 
forms  are  probably  of  comparatively  recent  date,  for  in  the 
days  of  the  "  Spectator,"  they  were  apparently  not  approved 
of,  and  we  read  in  No.  135,  of  this  contraction,  that"  it  has 


326  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

very  much  untuned  our  language,  and  clogged  it  with  con- 
sonants." In  our  day,  however,  the  moderate  use  of  these 
forms  is,  we  believe,  universally  admitted,  and  even  pre- 
ferred in  simple  and  unaffected  language.  They  are,  of 
course,  legitimately  excluded  from  solemn  addresses,  and 
the  license  must  even  in  lighter  trifling  not  go  quite  as  far 
as  Sam  Slick's  "  I  sha'nt  say  I  ka'nt;'  or  "  if  it  wa'nt."  The 
affirmative  presents  to  us  much  less  variety  of  form  and 
meaning.  There  used  to  be,  as  with  the  negative,  so  here 
also  two  distinct  forms,  ^ye  and  Yes  ;  the  former  now  anti- 
quated, and  the  latter  alone  surviving.  Aye  seems  to  have 
been  originally  the  same  as  that  aye,  which  meant  ever,  and 
hence  the  familiar  expression,  "  forever  and  for  aye"  It  is 
probable,  however,  that  it  was  pronounced  differently  from 
the  beginning,  for  as  far  back  as  the  days  of  Shakespeare, 
we  find  it  continually  spelt  a  simple  i,  as  in  "  Hamlet,"  HI. 
1:  — 

"  To  sleep,  perchance  to  dream,  /,  there 's  the  rub," 

and  hence,  also,  Romeo's  unpardonable  pun,  — 

"  Hath  Romeo  slain  himself?  say  thou  but  / 
And  that  bare  vowel  I  shall  poison  more 
Than  the  death-darting  eye  of  a  cockatrice." 

Yes  is  probably  a  contraction  of  the  ancient  affirmative  yea 
with  se  or  sy,  the  old  subjunctive  of  the  verb  to  be,  so  that 
it  meant  originally  so  be  it.  Our  oldest  authors  continually 
use  gea  (now  yea)  as  a  simple  affirmative,  as  in  Chaucer's 
"  By  gea  and  nay,"  and  Shakespeare,  ("  Merry  Wives,"  IV. 
2,  and  elsewhere,)  "  By  yea  and  nay"  But  the  use  of  these 
important  words  was  strictly  limited  by  the  nature  of  the 
question  to  which  they  furnished  a  reply.  Yea  and  nay 
answered  affirmative,  yes  and  jio  answered  negative  ques- 
tions, as  is  still  the  case  in  Icelandic  and  in  Swedish,  where 
the  same  difference  applies  to  Ja  and^o.  The  rule  was  ob- 
served by  Chaucer,  and  fliithfully  down  to  the  middle  of  the 
sixteenth  century ;  since  then  yea  and  nay  have  been  as- 
signed to  the  sacred  dialect  exclusively.     Even,  there,  how- 


ADVERBS.  327 

ever,  it  was  not  always  regarded,  or  Sir  Thomas  More  would 
not  have  found  occasion  to  blame  Tyndale  so  sharply  for 
his  neglect,  and  in  our  modern  version  it  is  not  at  all  ob- 
served, for  we  find  (Matth.  xvii.  24,  25),  "  Doth  not  your 
master  pay  tribute  ?    He  saith,  Yes  I " 


CHAPTER  XVn. 

PABTICLES. 
"  Bolts,  pins,  and  hinges  of  the  structure  of  language."  — Ja»it«aon. 

There  remains,  lastly,  of  all  the  words  that  make  up  the 
proud  fabric  of  our  English,  a  little  people  of  small  particles, 
insignificant  in  appearance,  and  at  first  sight  of  but  small 
importance.  But  like  the  long  unseen  infusoria  of  our 
globe,  which  Ehrenberg  at  last  proved  to  have  raised  lofty 
mountains  and  to  bear  on  their  accumulated  remains  vast 
cities,  so  these  despised  words,  long  considered  as  little 
better  than  mere  rubbish,  have  of  late  risen  in  the  esti- 
mation of  men  and  obtained  admittance  to  the  honored 
family  of  words.  Once  called  contemptuously  "  particles," 
as  if  they  were  mere  fractions  of  larger  words,  and  even  by 
Plutarch  designated  as  "  little  fragments  of  words,  used  in 
haste  and  for  dispatch,  instead  of  the  whole  words,"  those, 
at  least,  which  we  know  as  prepositions  have  now  estab- 
lished their  claim  to  be  considered  as  genuine  adverbs. 
The  use  we  make  of  them  in  modern  English  goes  far  to 
prove  the  justice  of  this  demand,  for  we  employ  them  con- 
tinually without  other  nouns,  simply  with  the  verb,  as  when 
we  say  " I  will  call  in"  " she  came  <o,"  " he  goes  i|y,"  and 
"it  is  over.''  Their  importance  rises  in  proportion  as  a 
nation  begins  to  think  more  acutely  and  to  express  its 
thought  more  accurately.  An  uncultivated  idiom  can  do 
without  them,  a  refined  idiom  even  can  express  a  common 
truth  in  short  axioms  and  direct  assertions  without  their 
aid.     But  as  soon  as  the  maturer  mind  begins  to  connect 


PARTICLES.  829 

thought  and  thought ;  as  soon  as  it  wishes  to  modify  what 
is  not  absolute ;  to  reason,  in  fine,  logically,  and  to  follow 
the  metaphysician,  these  particles  become  not  only  impor- 
tant but  indispensable.  On  their  proper  use  depends  the 
train  of  thought  and  the  course  of  reasoning.  Without 
them  we  can  never  obtain  that  perspicuity  which  is  the  first 
and  greatest  beauty  of  style,  and  without  which  the  progress 
of  the  mind  in  continued  discourses  can  never  be  clearly 
shown.  Hence  it  is  that  the  Attic  writers  all,  and  especially 
Plato,  abound  in  conjunctions,  to  the  distress  of  the  un- 
learned and  the  intense  delight  of  the  thinker. 

Another  field  in  which  these  particles  have,  of  late, 
acquired  unexpected  importance  is  that  of  Comparative 
Philology.  They  owe  this  mainly  to  Jamieson  and  to 
Home  Tooke,  whose  prodigious  labor  and  unsurpassed 
ingenuity,  though  by  no  means  always  successful,  deserve 
great  credit.  We  look  to  these  fragments  now  as  a  seldom 
failing  proof  of  the  living  affinity  between  two  languages, 
because  they  possess  certain  qualities  which  are  not  found 
in  other  parts  of  speech.  They  are  generally  of  high  antiq- 
uity, most  of  them,  even  in  the  ancient  languages,  —  having 
taken  their  established  form  and  meaning  in  ages  prior  to 
history.  At  the  same  time,  they  have  been  more  perma- 
nent than  other  terms,  as  they  are  the  fruit  of  the  mode  of 
thinking  peculiar  to  a  whole  nation,  determining  the  mean- 
ing not  only  of  numerous  compound  words,  but  of  almost 
every  phrase.  Finally,  they  derive  no  small  importance 
from  the  fact  that  they  are,  of  all  words,  least  likely  to  be 
introduced  into  other  languages,  because,  from  the  various 
and  nice  shades  of  signification  which  they  assume,  they  are 
far  more  unintelligible  to  foreigners  than  the  names  of 
objects  or  actions.  They,  not  unfrequently,  more  resemble 
arbitrary  sounds,  endowed  with  a  conventional  meaning;, 
attached  to  them  by  long  habit,  than  real  words.  This  very 
peculiarity,  however,  has  also  exposed  them  to  great  cor- 
ruption, as  foreigners  were  little  willing,  and  often  as  little 


3S0  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

able,  to  catch  the  fleeting  sound  of  apparently  insignificant 
words,  which,  moreover,  did  not  seem  to  affect  the  mean- 
ing of  the  sentence  very  seriously.  Hence  they  have  suf- 
fered more  than  any  other  part  of  speech  from  phonetic 
corruption,  and  it  is,  in  most  cases,  extremely  difficult  to 
trace  them  back  to  their  original  form  and  nature.  It  is 
in  this  department,  especially,  that  Home  Tooke  has  shown 
the  true  merit  of  his  prodigious  labor  and  unsurpassed 
ingenuity,  though  even  he  has  by  no  means  been  always 
successful. 

Prepositions  are  like  all  so-called  particles,  not  mere 
fragments  of  other  words,  casually  broken  of  and  aimlessly 
floating  about  among  the  mass  of  other  well-classed  words, 
but  they  also  were,  once  upon  a  time,  the  names  of  real 
objects.  After  a  while  they  were  employed  to  give  merely 
a  certain  coloring,  a  slightly  different  shade  of  meaning,  to 
other  terms,  as  we  even  now  speak  of  blood-thirstyy  lily- 
livered,  or  stowe-deaf  men,  without  intending  seriously  to 
refer  to  blood,  lilies,  or  stones.  Having  been  found  emi- 
nently useful  for  the  purpose,  they  were  continually  used  in 
the  same  connection  and  finally  ceased  to  have  an  existence 
of  their  own.  They  were  shortened,  as  being  the  inferior 
word  belonging  to  a  more  important  one,  and  finally  lost 
their  resemblance  to  the  parent  so  completely  as  entirely  to 
disguise  their  first  origin.  Very  few,  therefore,  can  now  be 
traced  back  to  their  original,  full  form. 

Much  has  been  done  in  this  direction,  especially  upon 
the  basis  of  Home  Tooke's  ingenious  and  plausible  conject- 
ures. The  more  the  subject  is  investigated,  the  more 
clearly  it  is  shown  that  these  so-called  particles  were  once 
upon  a  time  independent  words.  A  new  proof  of  this  has 
been  deduced  from  the  fact  that  the  majority  of  these 
words  serve  for  a  variety  of  purposes. 

Modern  conjunctions,  for  instance,  were  in  Old  English 
prepositions,  and  on  that  account  followed  by  "  that,"  as  in 
"  Before  that  certain  came  from  James,  he  did  eat  with 


PARTICLES.  331 

the  Gentiles"  (Gal.  ii.  12);  ''After  that  I  was  turned,  I 
repented "  (Jer.  xxxi.  19)  ;  and  "  Sith  that  I  have  told 
you,"  in  Chaucer.  Others  have  to  do  duty  in  several 
departments.  Aftei-  is  an  adjective  when  we  speak  of  "  the 
«/?er-part  of  a  ship,"  an  adverb  when  we  say,  that  "  some 
are  they  who  come  after"  a  preposition  in  the  words  "  afier 
a  while,"  and  a  conjunction  in  "I  will  call  again  after  you 
return." 

Whilst  this  confirms  the  opinion  that  all  such  particles 
were  originally  nouns  or  verbs,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
the  constant  use  of  this  class  of  words  has  so  completely 
effaced  their  date  and  original  character,  that  it  is  now 
extremely  difficult  to  explain  them  satisfactorily.  Still, 
something  may  be  done,  as  in  the  case  of  through,  which, 
with  a  frequent  transposition  of  the  letter  r,  was  anciently 
written  thurh,  and  is  the  same  word  as  the  noun  door.  Its 
German  representative  is  durch,  resembling  more  our  ex- 
panded form  thorough,  which  we  continue  to  use  by  itself 
and  in  words  like  thoroughfare.  In  old  MSS.  it  is  simply 
thurh,  as  in  — 

"  Thurh  the  means  of  mercie." 

But  already  in  Chaucer  we  find  an  odd  lengthened  form,  — 

"  Ydlenesse  is  the  thoruke  of  all  wycked  and  vilaine  thoughtes." 

Our  modern  with  is  nothing  but  the  root,  or  the  imperative 
form,  of  the  ancient  verb  withan,  which  meant  "  to  join." 
This  has  given  us,  in  like  manner,  the  corresponding  noun, 
so  that  we  speak  of  a  tough  withe,  to  cut  withes,  and  to 
fasten  a  boat  with  withes.  Other  prepositions  are  of  such 
antiquity  that  all  efforts  to  furnish  them  with  a  pedigree 
have  proved  useless,  especially  as  we  find  them  to  have 
appeared,  as  much  shortened  forms,  in  the  ancient  lan- 
guages. Thus  our  in  is  the  Greek  iv,  we  recognize  avd 
in  on,  oLTTo  in  of  and  its  derivative  after,  ad  in  at,  iiri  in  ^, 
Trept  or  Trapa  in  for,  with  its  second  form  of  fore,  and  virip 
in  over. 


332  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Some  of  these  words  have  become  obsolete  by  that  mys- 
terious force  operating  in  language,  which  defies  all  out- 
ward control  and  makes  itself  felt  only  in  its  final  effects. 
Thus  the  Greek  /xera,  which  has  its  genuine  representative 
in  the  German  mit,  was  once  known  to  Old  English  also 
as  mid,  and  used  as  a  preposition  as  late  as  the  year  1530, 
when  it  occurs  in  a  Kentish  MS.  Since  that  time,  how- 
ever, it  has  gradually  disappeared  as  such,  and  now  serves 
only  to  make  useful  compounds,  as  mc?wife,  miWshipman, 
and  others.  A  like  fate  seems  to  have  befallen  the  old  ymh^ 
in  German  urn,  and  representing  the  Greek  d/x<^i.  The 
early  Bible  version  still  uses  it,  saying,  — 

"  My  eel  menige  ymh  hime  saet." — Mark  iii.  32. 
But  in  modern  English  it  has  been  entirely  superseded  by 
about.  The  Anglo-Saxon  sithe  (in  German,  seit),  has 
undergone  a  remarkable  change.  It  was  anciently  used  as 
a  noun,  meaning  time,  and  from  this  an  adverb  was  formed 
by  the  use  of  the  genitive  case,  as  sithanes.  This  was 
shortened  in  Old  English  into  sithens,  and  has  since  suf- 
fered still  further  contraction  into  the  present  since. 

Other  prepositions  again  consist  of  two  or  more  ele- 
ments, which  combined  have  a  peculiar  meaning  of  their 
own.  Such  are  up-on,  he-fore,  about  from  on-be-out,  and 
above  from  on-be-upon.  This  process  of  joining  two  to- 
gether is  still  going  on,  and  we  use  thus  ovi  of  yet  sepa- 
rately, though  they  are  united  in  meaning.  A  few  only  are 
formed  from  nouns,  either  by  composition,  as  in  despite  and 
across,  or  by  mere  juxtaposition,  as  in  behalf  and  by  means 
of.  There  is,  lastly,  a  small  number  of  foreign  words  even, 
which  are  thus  employed.  We  read  of  the  hero  of  a  ro- 
mance that  he  sailed  "  via  the  little  island  of  St.  Thomas ; " 
the  "  Spectator "  says,  "  in  lieu  of  what  he  had  parted 
with ; "  Byron,  in  his  "  Don  Juan,"  VIII.  42,  uses  ''MalgrS 
all  which  people  say  of  glory,"  and  in  "  Love's  Labor  *s 
Lost,"  V.  2,  we  even  meet  with  the  unpardonable,  "»Saws 
crack  or  flaw  ;  saiis  sans,  I  pray  you."  ' 


PARTICLE 


4Zjffy      333 


As  these  prepositions  were  words  added  to  nouns,  mostly 
for  the  purpose  of  expressing  their  more  delicate  relations 
to  each  other,  which  the  mutilated  substantives,  for  want  of 
a  declension,  could  no  longer  suggest,  and  which  position 
alone  might  leave  doubtful,  so  conjunctions  were  employed 
to  convey  the  relation  which  sentences  and  parts  of  sen- 
tences bear  to  each  other.  The  English  is,  on  the  whole, 
remarkably  poor  in  this  class  of  words ;  at  least,  much 
poorer  than  the  Greek  and  the  German,  which  abound  in 
such  helps  to  thought.  Nevertheless,  here  also  the  Saxon 
element  has  held  its  own  and  admitted  but  very  few  Nor- 
man adventurers ;  among  the  intruders  we  have  because, 
except,  save,  concerning,  and  a  few  others.  Those  which  are 
of  native  growth  can  generally  be  traced  back  to  the  orig- 
inal word  of  another  class  from  which  they  are  derived. 
Thus  our  and  has  already  been  mentioned  as  being  nothing 
less  than  the  present  participle  of  an  ancient  verb,  anan, 
to  add  ;  though  some  etymologists  prefer  deriving  it  from 
the  past  participle  of  the  same  verb,  anad,  which  would 
naturally,  by  constant  use,  contract  into  and.  The  now 
obsolete  an,  which  has  of  late  been  entirely  superseded  by 
if,  may  be  traced  back  to  the  same  root ;  it  conveyed  the 
idea  of  giving  or  granting,  so  that  "  an  it  please  you  "  was 
originally  the  same  as  "  granted  it  please  you." 

Our  or  is,  in  like  manner,  a  contracted  form,  and  derived 
from  the  adjective  other,  which  in  ancient  writers  is 
found  almost  exclusively  used  for  or.  Till  is  a  more  com- 
plicated form.  It  is  derived  from  the  two  words  to  hvil, 
which  latter  is  now  represented  by  while,  and  thus  means 
in  effect,  "  to  the  while,"  or,  "  to  the  time."  Hence  it  is  in 
modern  English  generally  limited  to  expressions  of  time, 
whilst  in  old  authors  it  is  mixed  up  with  the  idea  of  space. 
Thus  Chaucer  has,  — 

"  Now  are  we  driven  til  hething  and  til  scorae,"  (4108,) 
whilst  Shakespeare  says  correctly,  -— 

"  Never  till  to-night,  never  till  now, 
Did  I  go  thro'  a  tempest  dropping  fire." — JuliusCcesar,  1.3. 


334  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

The  ungraceful  compound  until  represents  "on  to  the 
time." 

But  is,  in  like  manner  and  in  spite  of  its  simple  appear- 
ance, a  compound  of  two  words,  being  formed,  after  the 
manner  of  beyond,  beneath,  before,  and  behind,  of  be  and  ut, 
the  modern  out.  The  old  be  had  manifold  duties  to  per- 
form, but  in  these  words,  as  in  between,  literally  inter  binos, 
it  simply  conveys  the  idea  of  locality,  as  our  modem  hf, 
and  thus  be-ut,  but,  corresponds  exactly  to  the  Greek  Trap- 
€KT6<i.  That  this  derivation  of  but  from  be-out  is  not  a  mere 
fancy  of  etymologists  appears  from  the  fact  that  the  word  is 
provincially  still  used  in  its  original  meaning.  In  many 
localities  but  o'  house  means  the  outer  part  of  the  house,  or 
the  outer  room,  and  ben  o'  house  (by-in)  is  the  inner  or 
more  retired  part  of  the  house.  Cottagers  often  desire 
their  landlords  to  build  them  a  but  and  a  ben. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  the  varied  methods  by  which  the 
purpose  of  discriminating  between  several  has  been  accom- 
plished in  different  languages.  The  office  of  the  English 
but  is  simply  to  state  what  is  out,  or  outside,  of  that  which 
has  been  mentioned, —  a  distinction  which  is  made  with  more 
or  less  precision,  according  to  circumstances.  The  Greek 
accomplished  this  by  speaking  of  other  things,  aXXa  ;  the 
German  sunders  one  from  another,  and  employs  sondem, 
whilst  the  Romance  languages  use  the  idea  of  preference, 
by  means  of  magis,  which  gives  them  mais,  mas,  and  mo, 
somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  our  English  rather. 

The  short  as  conceals,  also,  two  component  parts,  its 
Anglo-Saxon  form  having  been  eal  svd,  meaning  "  all  so  *' 
or  "  quite  so,"  which  survives  in  our  adverb  also.  In  the 
twelfth  century  it  had  already  shrunk  into  als,  a  form  which 
still  continues  in  German,  and  since  that  time  it  has  still 
further  lost  of  its  substance  so  as  to  be  reduced  to  as. 
Lest  consists  of  leas  and  the  in  the  meaning  of  "  less  that," 
but  it  read  already  in  1250  leste  (R.  A.,  I.  69).  The  latter 
part,  thaetj  is  nothing  more  than  the  pronoun  of  the  same 


PARTICLES.  385 

form,  and  was  already  so  explained  by  the  famous  but 
little  appreciated  "  Grammaire  des  Messieurs  de  Port 
Royal,"  who  learnedly  pointed  out  the  analogy  with  the 
Latin  quod. 

If  has  long  since  been  known  to  be  the  imperative  of 
the  Saxon  verb  gifan,  "to  give,"  and  shows  with  perfect 
certainty  the  gradual  process  of  corruption  it  has  under- 
gone. The  connection  with  the  verb  "  to  give  "  is  as  evi- 
dent in  meaning  as  in  form.  If  we  say,  "  I  will  come  if  I 
can,"  we  mean  literally  "  Give  (or  given)  that  I  can,  I 
will  come."     It  was  long  written  with  the  initial  g,  as  in  — 

'*  My  largesse 
Has  lotted  her  to  be  your  brother's  mistresse, 
G^she  can  be  reclaimed,  gif  not,  his  prey." 

Sad  Shepherd,  II.  1. 

By  the  side  of  this  probable  imperative  form  the  participle 
is  not  wanting.  We  find  in  "  Lodge's  Illustrations  "  how 
the  Queen  wrote  to  Sir  W.  Cecil  in  one  place,  — 

"  Yeaven  under  our  signet," 
and  in  another,  — 

"  Teven  under  seale  of  our  order," 

showing  the  fragile  nature  of  the  initial  g  and  its  natural  tran- 
sition from  a  hard  to  a  soft  sound,  until  it  finally  disappears 
altogether.  Chaucer  writes  it  in  a  curious  variety  of  ways, 
now  gif  and  now  if,  then  yeve  or  yef  and  even  yf.  The 
initial  held  its  own,  however,  as  late  as  1500,  and  in  Lin- 
colnshire it  may  be  heard  to  this  day.  The  Scotch  are 
partial  to  gin,  a  contracted  form  of  given,  just  as  they  love 
to  shorten  —  they  would  call  it  to  soften  — give  into  gie. 

The  general  tendency  of  the  English  to  dispense  with  all 
parts  of  the  language  that  are  not  essential  and  indispens- 
able to  the  conveyance  of  thought  from  man  to  man,  however 
ornamental  they  may  be  deemed  by  some,  has  led  to  the 
neglect  of  a  large  number  of  conjunctions  formerly  in  use. 
This  process  was  accelerated  by  the  sad  abuse  into  which  the 
the  writers  of  the  thirteenth  century  fell,  and  especially  Man- 


886  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

deville.  In  looking  over  their  pages  we  are  at  once  struck 
by  the  prolific  family  of  "  all  be  it "  and  "  how  be  it,"  the 
"  for  as  much  "  and  the  "  in  as  much,"  together  with  what 
Shaftesbury,  in  his  "  Miscellanies,"  calls  "  the  gouty  joints 
....  of  whereuntos  and  wherebys,  thereofs,  therewiths, 
etc.,  and  the  perpetual  drawl  of  those  huge  monsters  of 
particles,  peradventure,  notwithstanding,  etc."  How  soon 
and  how  completely  this  fashion  changed  may  be  judged 
from  the  fact  that  Hume  objected  to  Robertson's  use  of  the 
word  wherewith.  "  I  should  as  soon  take  back,"  he  says, 
"  whereupon,  whereunto,  and  wherewithal.  I  think  the 
only  tolerable,  decent  gentleman  of  the  family  is  wherein^ 
and  I  should  not  choose  to  be  often  seen  in  his  company." 
Campbell  also  speaks  of  what  he  facetiously  calls  the  "  lug- 
gage of  particles,"  but  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  draw  the 
line  with  accuracy.  Much  of  it,  no  doubt,  is  cumbersome, 
and  yet  we  soon  find  that  without  it  we  cannot  well  do. 
Thus  the  judicious  use  of  these  conjunctions  has  become 
one  of  the  most  characteristic  features  of  good  writers  in 
our  day,  while  their  abundance  in  older  authors  gives  to 
their  writings  a  quaint  and  old-fashioned,  but  by  no  means 
unattractive,  flavor. 

If  the  English  is  poorer  in  conjunctive  particles  than  either 
the  Greek  or  the  German,  it  abounds,  by  way  of  strange 
compensation,  in  interjections,  for  which  there  is  no  equiv- 
alent, at  least  in  the  refined  form  of  other  languages. 
This  is  all  the  more  surprising,  as  generally  only  southern 
nations,  of  excitable  temper  and  vehement  utterance,  are 
considered  fond  of  this  class  of  words,  whilst  the  staid,  sober 
Englishman  would  not  seem  given  to  like  indulgence. 

The  tendency  to  energetic  brevity,  which  characterizes 
our  language,  has,  no  doubt,  led  to  the  frequent  use  of  not 
only  genuine  interjections,  but  also  of  numerous  spurious 
ones,  which  are,  in  fact,  abbreviated  sentences,  oaths  and 
exclamations,  like  the  Latin  eccere  (per  aedem  Cereris),  Me- 
hercle  (ita  me  Hercules),  mediiis  Jilius  (me  Dius  filius),  and 


PARTICLES.  337 

the 'English  strange /  hark/  adieu/  welcome/  They  roused 
Home  Tooke's  indignation,  and  he  complains  that  "  the 
brutish,  inarticulate  interjection,  which  has  nothing  to  do 
with  speech,  and  is  only  the  miserable  refuge  of  the  speech- 
less, has  been  permitted,  because  beautiful  and  gaudy,  (sic), 
to  usurp  a  place  among  words."  He  strengthens  his  case 
by  adding  with  some  force,  "  And  where  will  you  look  for 
the  interjection  ?  Will  you  find  it  among  laws,  or  in  books 
of  civil  institutions,  in  history,  or  in  any  treatise  of  useful 
arts  or  sciences  ?  No ;  you  must  seek  for  it  in  rhetoric  and 
poetry,  in  novels,  plays,  and  romances !  " 

What  would  his  indignation  have  been  if  he  could  have 
foreseen  the  day  on  which  men  like  the  learned  author  of 
"  Chapters  on  Language,"  and  others,  would  stand  up  for 
this  despised  class  of  words,  and  in  the  face  of  high  author- 
ities like  Max  Miiller,  insist  upon  it,  that  they,  like  the  imi- 
tation of  natural  sounds,  are  "  a  stepping-stone  to  true  lan- 
guage, both  by  suggesting' the  idea  of  articulate  speech,  and 
by  supplying  a  large  number,  if  not  Ihe  entire  number  of 
actual  roots."  He  would  have  been  distressed  in  honest 
grief,  to  find  that  many  look  upon  them  as  the  very  fountain 
from  which  all  other  words  have  come  down.  Although 
this  view  is  now  no  longer  entertained  as  generally,  nor 
with  the  same  zeal  as  it  was  a  generation  ago,  the  argu- 
ment still  exists,  that  interjections  have  occasionally  led  to 
the  formation  of  certain  classes  of  words,  as  A/i  /  which  no 
doubt  has  produced  the  whole  series  of  Aryan  terms :  a^o?, 
achen,  ache,  anguish,  angustus,  and  the  word  agony  itself. 
Nor  can  it  be  denied  that,  as  Max  Miiller  himself  admits, 
interjections  might,  in  case  of  necessity,  suffice  to  form 
some  kind  of  language.  This  means,  of  course,  no  more 
than  that  they  would  form  part  of  the  raw  material,  exactly 
as  we  now  trace  all  classes  of  words  more  or  less  clearly 
back  to  some  first  root.  As  the  latter  is  often  forgotten,  if 
not  altogether  extinct,  so  it  has  frequently  happened  with 
interjections  ;  they  were  — 
22 


888  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

" the  ladder 
Whereto  the  climber  upward  turns  his  face, 
But  when  he  once  attains  the  utmost  round, 
He  then  unto  the  ladder  turns  his  back, 
Looks  in  the  clouds,  scorning  the  base  degrees 
By  which  he  did  ascend." 

Even  thus,  forgotten  and  forlorn  in  their  apparent  solitude, 
they  are  useful  members  of  language  :  a  long  speech  often 
does  not  convey  as  much  as  one  short  interjection,  and  how 
much  can  be  done  by  them,  when  aided  by  gestures  and  an 
active  play  of  the  features,  was  proved  by  the  last  king  of 
Naples,  who  once  entertained  his  inflammable  subjects  from 
his  balcony  by  a  speech  consisting  of  nothing  but  gestures 
and  a  few  interjections,  and  succeeded  in  sending  them 
away  contented.  There  is  no  doubt,  that  the  best  of  his 
speeches  would  have  failed  in  producing  the  same  happy 
result.  This  use  of  interjections  is,  of  course,  possible  only 
where  nervous  sympathy  is  still  active,  and  nervous  organi- 
zation both  delicate  and  sensitive  —  among  children,  sav- 
ages, and  nations  that  '•esemble  them  in  their  temperament 
To  such  a  people  refer  the  words,  "  He  winketh  with  his 
eyes,  he  speaketh  with  his  feet,  he  teacheth  with  his  fingers.** 
(Proverbs  vi.  13.)  The  voices  of  nature  are  therefore 
many,  though  Dr.  King  maintains  that  — 

"  Nature  in  many  tones  complains. 
Has  many  sounds  to  tell  her  pains, 
But  for  her  joys  has  only  three. 
And  these  but  small  ones :  Ha!  ha!  he!" 

Fortunately  man  has  more,  and  as  many  of  them  have 
passed  unaltered  into  the  domain  of  finished  language,  they 
have  there  their  own  province,  and  by  no  means  ignoble 
purpose.  They  are  indispensable  for  the  full  expression  of 
feeling  and  passion,  and  when  we  remember  that  the  tender 
sentiments  and  passionate  emotions  of  man  have  at  least  as 
much  to  do  with  his  happiness  as  logic  and  abstract  thought, 
we  shall  see  at  once  the  important  part  interjections  play 
in  the  drama  of  life.    Mr.  Marsh  mentions  very  happily 


PARTICLES.  339 

that  Whitfield's  "  Ah  !  of  pity  for  the  repentant  sinner,  and 
his  Oh  !  of  encouragement  and  persuasion  for  the  almost 
converted  listener,  formed  one  of  the  great  excellencies  of 
his  oratory,"  and  we  can  easily  recall  the  singular  charm 
which  some  of  the  loftiest  and  loveliest  passages  of  our 
poets  owe  to  such  words.  We  will  mention  only  Words- 
worth's touching  lines,  — 

"  She  lived  unknown,  and  few  could  know 
When  Lucy  ceased  to  be, 
But  she  is  in  her  grave,  and  oh  ! 
The  difference  to  me !  " 

Some  of  these  interjections  are  not  even  aspiring  to  the 
dignity  of  words,  but  remain  what  Heyse  in  his  great  work 
on  the  "  Science  of  Language  "  calls  happily  vocal  gestures, 
utterances  which  are  not  only  apt  to  be  connected  with 
certain  gestures,  but  also  capable  of  being  represented  by 
them.  Such  are  st !  hush  !  pish  !  pshaw  !  pooh  !  and  other 
expressions  of  contempt  or  aversion.  It  is  this  class,  no 
doubt,  which  first  suggested  the  term  interjections,  as  rep- 
resenting a  class  of  sounds,  so  to  say,  thrown  in  with  the 
sentence  and  yet  capable  of  expressing  some  emotion,  even 
when  no  verb  was  added. 

They  must,  by  their  very  nature,  necessarily  be  brief,  else 
they  cannot  be  energetic.  Hence  they  assume,  in  all  lan- 
guages, a  contracted  or  curtailed  form.  Thus  in  the  Roman 
Eccere,  for  Per  aedem  Cereris,  Mehercle  for  Ita  me  Hercules 
juvet.  Thus  in  the  French  MorUeu  for  Par  la  mort  de 
Dieu,  and  in  our  ZooJcs  for  By  God's  looks.  These,  however, 
can  hardly  be  called  genuine  interjections,  as  they  are 
rather  abbreviated  sentences,  of  which  but  one  word,  or  at 
best  fragments  of  two  words,  survive  for  practical  use. 
Such  was  even  the  single  letter  O,  for  the  Greek  ov  (not), 
with  which  the  poet  Philoxenus  is  said  to  have  replied  to 
the  tyrant  Dionysius,  who  had  invited  him  to  his  court  at 
Syracuse. 

The  most  ancient  interjection  in  English  is  probably  the 


840  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Anglo-Saxon  vala,  literally,  woe-lo !  The  latter  part  is 
familiar  enough ;  it  is  one  of  the  almost  instinctive  ejacula- 
tions, for  which  no  explanation  is  needed.  But  the  two 
together  have  suffered  sadly  in  the  course  of  their  subse- 
quent history.  Chaucer  already  expands  the  exclamation 
into  his  habitual  wella-way !  Shakespeare  employs  it,  no 
doubt,  as  it  was  used  by  his  contemporaries,  and  calls  it, 
with  one  of  those  perversions  which  the  common  people 
affect  so  much,  and  of  which  we  have  seen  numerous  illus- 
trations in  another  chapter,  welladay !  The  same  change 
took  place  in  two  other  words  of  the  same  class.  One  is 
the  French  helas,  itself  but  a  spurious  interjection,  derived 
from  the  Proven9al  troubadours,  who  were  fond  of  sighing, 
Ai  lasso  !  literally,  "Ah  me  weary ! "  It  became  our  English 
alas  !  though  it  is  noteworthy  that  it  is  hardly  ever  used 
by  the  common  people,  to  whom  no  doubt,  there  was  always 
something  foreign  about  the  word,  and  hence  it  comes  not 
naturally,  just  as  they  consistently  substitute /a/Z  or  harvest 
for  the  foreign  and  unintelligible  autumn.  But  even  the 
better  knowledge  of  those  who  used  alas  !  did  not  preserve 
it  from  a  speedy  change  into  alack  !  as  if  the  hard  conso- 
nant at  the  end  gave  it  both  greater  force  and  a  more  Eng- 
lish air,  and  from  this  was  subsequently  derived  the  still 
fuller  alachaday !  which,  in  its  turn,  gave  us  the  familiar 
lackadaisical.  The  same  happened  to  the  simple  exclama- 
tion hey,  which  was  by  force  of  analogy  connected  with  the 
same  word,  and  became  heyday.  It  may  be  added  that 
the  original  vala  still  survives  in  the  mournful  complaint  of 
the  men  of  Ayrshire,  who  exclaim  :  Wallywae !  whilst  in 
Scotland  we  hear  the  well-known  song,  — 

"  0  waly  waly  up  the  banks." 

The  contemptuous  ^e  is  a  regular  form  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
verb^aw,  to  hate,  from  which  we  have  also  derived,  in  the 
form  of  its  present  participle,  fand,  the  modern  Jiend,  the 
man  who  hates  us.  Its  meaning  is  now  limited  to  the  one 
great  fiend  of  the  human  race,  whilst  for  other  purposes  the 


PARTICLES.  341 

French  enemy  has  taken  its  place.  It  ought  not  to  be  over- 
looked, however,  that  even  aside  from  this  very  apparent 
and  indisputable  derivation,  there  seems  to  be  an  inherent 
expression  in  this  combination  of  letters  ;  at  least,  the  cor- 
respondence is  singular  between  the  French  ji^  the  German 
'pfui^  the  Greek  ^ev,  and  the  Latin  'phy^  as  quoted  in  Ter- 
ence. There  occur  occasionally,  in  English  authors  of  all 
ages,  similar  interjections,  like/o^  and/aw^A,  which  are,  in 
all  probability,  but  the  same  word  in  slightly  altered  forms. 
Thus  Shakespeare's  Othello  says,  — 

*'  Fdh^  one  may  smell  to  such  a  will  most  rank." 

A  class  of  great  importance,  however  objectionable  on 
account  of  the  want  of  respect  and  reverence  which  their 
use  necessarily  implies,  are  those  interjections  which  con- 
tain an  appeal  to  God  or  sacred  personages.  In  almost  all 
cases  an  effort  has  been  made,  for  decency's  sake,  to  dis- 
guise the  original  word,  however  transparent  the  veil  may 
generally  be  by  which  it  is  hidden.  An  old  author  as- 
cribed this  desire  to  conceal  to  a  wish  that  "  the  good  God 
would  not  recognize  Himself  when  thus  disguised."  The 
Normans  were  great  swearers,  and  their  most  usual  oath 
was  "  By  God  !  "  so  that,  as  in  modern  times,  an  English- 
man on  the  Continent  was  often  designated  but  too  truly  as 
a  Goddam  ;  the  Normans  also  were  called  by  the  people  of 
England  Bygods,  and  hence,  in  all  probability,  our  word 
higot.  It  is  certain  that  in  olden  times  Norman  and  Bigot 
were  synonymous ;  the  latter  word,  for  a  long  time,  only 
meant  superstitious,  and  its  present  meaning  is  of  compar- 
atively recent  date.  Even  the  later  kings  were  still  fond 
of  such  interjections,  and  — 

"  hay,  hay,  the  white  swan 
By  God's  soul,  I  am  thy  man !  " 

was  the  motto  of  King  Edward  III.,  whilst  one  of  Chaucer's 
men  swears,  — 

"  I  make  a  vow  by  Goddes  digne  bones.^' 


842  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

Thus  it  came  about  that  the  corresponding  French  form, 
Par  Dieu,  also  soon  became  well-known  all  over  England. 
It  was  naturalized  as  Pardee,  but  often  sadly  ill-treated,  as 
in  Spenser, — 

"  Perdy,  said  Britomart,  thi  choice  is  hard."  —  Fairy  Queen,  HI.  127. 

The  same  oath  —  we  hope  not  its  constant  use  —  gave  the 
proper  names  of  Pardee,  Pardoe,  and  similar  ones,  as  Par- 
sail  represents  the  kindred  Par  Oiel. 

From  the  abuse  of  the  name  of  God,  to  that  of  his  parts 
and  qualities,  there  was,  of  course,  but  a  step,  and  older 
writers  are  soon  found  to  abound  in  odd  combinations.  The 
sovereigns  themselves  set  a  bad  example,  Queen  Elizabeth 
having  a  fancy  for  God^s  death,  and  Charles  for  the  short- 
ened odd's  death.  This  thin  disguise  became  a  great  favorite 
with  the  people,  and  gave  rise  to  numerous  odd^s  blood,  odd!s 
life,  odd^s  heart,  and  even  — 

"  Odslifelings  here  he  is ! "  —  Twelfth  Night,  V.  1. 

and  the  profanely  vulgar  odd's  bobs,  odd's  pittihins,  odd^s 
hounds  (probably  in  reality  God's  wounds)  ;  in  Smollett 
even  odd's  muggers. 

A  still  more  violent  shortening  reduced  the  holy  name 
to  a  single  s,  as  in  — 

"  'S  blood,  I  '11  not  bear  my  own  flesh  so  far 
Again  for  all  the  coin  in  thy  father's  exchequer." 

Henry  IV.,  Part  H.,  U.  2. 

and  in  the  contemporaneous  's  death,  familiar  to  all  readers. 
The  combination  already  mentioned  of  God^s  wounds, 
having  reference  to  the  much  revered  five  wounds  of  the 
Saviour,  and  used  fully  in  — 

"Ah,  by  God's  loounds,  quoth  he,  and  swore  so  loud 
That  all  amazed  the  priest  let  fall  his  book." 

Petrucchio  and  Catherine. 

was  subsequently  contracted  into  zounds,  zoons,  and  oons,  as 
the  now  poetical  sound  of  wounds  (like  sounds),  changed 
into  the  present  pronunciation. 


PARTICLES.  343 

Another  series  of  transformations  is  that  from  God  into 
Gad^  and  thence  into  egad^  ecod,  gadso,gog,  and  finally 
cock  I  The  frequent  affirmation  of  the  Bible,  "  May  God  do 
so  and  so  to  me,"  was  no  doubt  in  the  mind  of  those  who 
used  God-so  and  then  Gad-so,  though  Home  Tooke  wishes 
to  refer  the  expression  to  an  Italian  word,  cazzo,  which  was 
introduced  into  England  in  the  time  of  James  I.  From 
cock  are  again  derived  numerous  modifications,  the  oldest 
of  which  probably  occurs  in  — 

"  They  sware  all  by  cohkes  bone,''^  —  Huntyng  of  the  Hare,  I.  117, 
and  to  which  may  be  added  cockes  wounds,  cockes  passions, 
and  cockes  mother,  so  frequent  in  Chaucer's  and  in  Shake- 
speare's writings.  Hence,  also,  the  almost  unintelligible  By 
cocke  and  pie,  once  the  most  solemn  oath  that  could  be 
taken,  and  considered  equal  in  weight  and  awe  to  the  for- 
midable "  By  God  and  his  holy  word."  Cocke,  as  has  been 
mentioned,  usurped  the  name  of  God,  and  Pie  was  the 
familiar  name  of  the  table  in  old  Roman  missals,  by  means 
of  which,  as  by  our  Golden  Number,  the  service  of  the  day 
could  be  found.  Grandison  uses  od's  my  life,  and  therer 
after  the  word  expanded  still  further  into  Gadzooks,  used 
by  Dickens. 

Another  combination  again  was  God^s  body,  which  led  to 

God's  hodikin  and  od  's  hodikin,     Shakespeare  says,  — 

"  Odsbody,  the  turkeys  in  my  pannier  are  quite  starved." 

Henry  IV.,  Part  I.,  II.  1. 

and  — 

"  Bodikim,  Master  Page,  though  I  now  be  old  and  of  peace,  if  I  see  a 
swords  out  my  finger  itches  to  be  one."  —  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor. 

In  provincial  dialects,  finally,  we  meet  with  still  other  dis- 
guises, like  hegor  and  hegosh  which  occur  in  Dorsetshire, 
and  hegorra  in  Ireland. 

The  name  of  Jesus  is  more  rarely  abused  thus.  We  meet 
only  among  the  most  vulgar  with  its  corruption, /m^o  and 
jinkins  or  jinkers.  The  only  important  form  is  the  ancient 
's/aa:;,  meaning  originally  Christ's  fax  or  hair,  the  ^er  cap- 
illum  Christi  of  the  church,  an  oath  that  was  specially  for- 


844  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

bidden  by  a  separate  canon.  The  fax  in  it  is  the  Anglo- 
S^xon  word  which  has,  among  others,  given  us  the  two 
names  of  Fairfax,  the  fair-haired,  and  Halifax,  the  holy 
hair. 

The  Virgin  Mary  appears  first  as  Ay  Mary,  which,  like 
similar  words,  was  soon  shortened  into  I  Marry,  or  Marry! 
simply.  In  Chaucer,  men's  most  modest  oath  seems  to  be 
an  undisguised  Mary.     Shakespeare  has  — 

"  Marry,  none  so  rank 
As  may  dishonor  him." —  Hamlet,  II.  3. 

and  Johnson  seems  to  speak  of  it  as  still  in  common  use  in 
his  day.  A  less  direct  form  of  the  same  oath  was  the  favor- 
ite By  our  Lady  !  often  treated  curtly  as  Birlady  !  and  sub- 
sequently much  used  in  the  diminutive  form  as  By  Leakins, 
Our  Lakin.     Thus  we  find,  — 

"By^r  lakin  a  parlous  fear." 

Midgumm&r  NighVs  Dream,  III.  1. 

and  — 

"  Birlady,  Sir,  ye  have  rid  hard,  that  ye  have." 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 

Of  heathen  oaths,  so  common  in  Italian,  we  have  probably 
but  one  really  naturalized  in  our  midst ;  that  is  the  vulgar 
0  Jeminy !  originally  0  Gemini,  an  appeal  to  Castor  and 
Pollux. 


CHAPTER  XVm. 

SHIFTING   LETTERS. 
"  Verba  volant,  nee  non  litterae." 

Among  the  apparently  arbitrary  changes  which  take 
place  in  all  languages,  there  is  none  more  curious,  and,  at 
the  same  time  less  carefully  noted,  than  the  fate  of  cer- 
tain letters,  which  are  either  entirely  omitted  for  no  osten- 
sible reason  or  so  frequently  transposed  from  one  part  of 
the  word  to  another,  as  to  make  us  suspect  an  inherent 
tendency  in  all  nations  to  treat  them  as  what  grammarians 
call  liquids,  and  let  them  flow  to  their  level.  As  our  Eng- 
lish, also,  has  a  few  traces  of  this  mysterious  power  in  lan- 
guage, it  may  not  be  amiss  to  mention  here  one  or  two  of 
the  more  important  illustrations. 

The  liquid  r  is  of  all  the  letters  of  the  alphabet  the  one 
that  most  frequently  changes  its  place.  Already  in  Greek 
it  would  thus  transform  Kapros  into  Kparo?,  and  KupSia  into 
the  Ionic  KpaSta  ;  in  Latin,  the  sea-monster  pristis  became 
pistris,  and  verbs  like  cerno  made  forms  like  cretum.  Hence 
also,  in  French,  the  r  is  transferred  in  the  change  from  the 
Latin :  vervex  becomes  brebis,  although  herger  retains  the 
true  form,  2ind formagium  reappears  asfromage.  It  maybe 
through  such  French  manipulation  that  certain  English 
words,  derived  from  the  Latin,  present  us  their  r  in  new 
places.  Thus  turbuy  through  a  secondary  word,  turbular, 
became  the  French  troubler,  and  is  now  our  trouble,  as  the- 
saurus, through  the  French  tresor,  is  our  treasure.  Others 
cannot  be  traced  beyond  their  French  ancestor,  and  have 
changed  in  the  transition  from  Normandy  to  England,  as 


846  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

grenier  into  gamer,  proposer  into  purpose,  and  hordcl  —  if 
that  be  not  an  Anglo-Saxon  word  —  into  brothel  The  Ital- 
ian, also,  has  furnished  us  a  few  such  words,  in  which  the 
transposition  of  the  r  is  clearly  traceable.  The  Greek 
<{)p€V€TLKos  became  Italian /arweh'co,  and  now  reappears  in 
our  midst  as  frantic  ;  a  ship  of  the  town  of  Ragusa,  once 
a  very  important  port  with  considerable  commerce,  was 
called  an  Argosy  ;  the  kermes,  which  already  in  Italian  is 
called  chermosino  or  cremisino,  gives  us  the  two  words  crim- 
son and  carmine,  and  the  ancient  KLfjifxepCa  has  become 
famous  again  as  Crimea. 

Proper  names,  even,  had  not  escaped  the  vagaries  of 
this  strange  letter.  Our  Anglo-Saxon  fathers  formed  one 
of  Eal  (all)  and  Bright,  which  we  have  changed  into  Al- 
hert,  whilst  the  Germans  retain  Alhrecht ;  FroUsher  is  but 
a  furbisher  of  arms  in  olden  times ;  Brougham,  the  man 
from  the  home-burg  or  borough ;  Winthrop  and  Cracken- 
throp  contain  the  old  word  thorp,  and  the  town  of  Dunbar- 
ton  was  originally  the  town  near  the  Briton's  down. 

Our  own  English  words  abound  in  examples  of  this  trans- 
position, and  often  form  numerous  varieties  by  a  simple 
transfer  of  r,  occasionally  accompanied  by  a  corresponding 
modification  of  the  radical  vowel.  The  one  root  bear,  in 
Anglo-Saxon  beran,  thus  gives  us  directly  bairn  or  bom,  as 
in  — 

"  for  man's  love  of  heuen, 
That  hare  the  blissful  hame,  that  brought  us  on  the  rode," 

Piers  Ploughman  ; 

and,  developing  still  farther,  birth,  then  hier,  then  berry,  bar- 
ley, beer,  and  even  burden.  Transposing  now  the  r  to  join 
the  initial,  the  same  root  produces  bred,  breed,  brat,  brood, 
brother,  and  bride,  ever  retaining  the  under-current  of  the 
meaning  to  bear,  however  variously  modified  to  designate 
its  various  relations  and  results.  A  similarly  fruitful  root, 
in  which  r  plays  a  prominent  part,  is  our  verb  to  bum,  from 
the  Anglo-Saxon  brennan.     Wickliffe  has  still, "  The  chaflSs 


SHIFTING  LETTERS.  847 

he  schal  hreune  a  fier  unquenchable "  (Luke  iii.  17),  and 
"  Forsothe  it  is  better  for  to  be  weddid  than  for  to  be  hrent " 
(Corinth,  vii.  9).     Even  Sir  Thomas  More  says, — 

"  But  -would  to  God  these  hatefull  workes  all 
Were  in  fyre  brent  to  powder  small." 

The  Germans  have  here  also  retained  the  original  form, 
and  use  to  this  day  brennen,  and  so  we  form  almost  all  the 
derivatives  of  the  root,  except  burnish,  which  we  get  from 
the  French  hrunir.  Thus  we  speak  of  a  brand  snatched 
from  the  fire,  and  of  a  brant  fox,  when  his  hair  looks  burnt, 
whence  Longfellow  sings,  — 

"  I  have  given  you  brant  and  beaver." 
From  the  same  word  comes  our  brandy,  which  was  at  first 
brand-wine,  distilled  by  fire,  as  the  Germans  still  call  it 
Branntwein  ;  bran,  also,  retains  the  meaning,  suggesting  the 
brown,  husky  part  of  ground  wheat,  and  that  which  is  bran 
new,  i.  e.,  newly  come  out  of  the  fire,  and  still  shining. 
Brown  is  the  burnt  color,  as  bronze  is  designated  in  the 
same  way. 

Board  and  broad  are  thus  one  and  the  same  word,  both  at 
first  written  alike,  brede,  and  hence  the  Old-English  Bible 
version  speaks  of  — 

"  Nayled  on  a  6rec?e  of  tre," 

whilst  the  Germans  retain  even  now  the  r  in  the  first  place 
in  both  words,  Brett  and  breit,  and  we  return  to  the  older 
form  in  breadth,  instead  of  saying  broadth.  The  boar  makes 
an  adjective,  anciently  boaren,  but  now  brawn.  A  cart  and 
a  crate  are  again  the  same  word,  and  so  are  gross  and  coarse. 
Our  cress  (nasturtium)  was,  in  its  Anglo-Saxon  form,  cerse 
or  caerse,  and  hence,  at  a  very  early  period,  the  absurd  mis- 
take in  the  popular  phrase,  "  I  do  not  care  a  curse,"  which 
was  meant  at  first  to  express,  "  I  do  not  care  a  (water) 
cress."     Even  Chaucer  says,  — 

"  Of  paramours  ne  raughthe  not  a  A;ers."  — Miller^ s  Tale, 

a  form  from  which  the  transition  to  curse  appears  very  short 


348  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH. 

and  natural.  Very  much  the  same  process  has  gone  on  in 
grass,  which  was  originally  gars,  from  which  our  gorse,  and, 
perhaps,  also,  our  grouse.     Douglas  has,  — 

"  The  greene  gers  bedewit  was  and  wet,"  —  V.  138, 
and  the  people  of  Yorkshire  say  to  this  day  gerse  for  grass. 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  the  so-called  vulgar- 
ism afeard,  is  so  only  as  far  as  fashion  is  allowed  to  control 
a  language,  for  the  word  is  correctly  formed  from  the  verb 
to  fear,  and  it  is  only  this  tendency  to  transpose  the  r,  which 
has  produced  words  like  afraid  and  fright. 

It  need  hardly  be  stated  that  there  is  no  difference  be- 
tween frth  and  frith,  nor  between  frame  a,nd  form.  The 
modern  word  horse  is  an  example  of  violent  change ;  it  was 
anciently  hros,  remains  so  in  German  as  Boss,  and  survives, 
even  in  English,  in  the  walrus,  the  whale-horse  or  sea-horse 
of  our  ancestors.  The  Anglo-Saxon  verb  scearan  has  re- 
tained its  r  in  its  first  place  in  most  derivatives  —  in  share 
and  shears,  and  sheers,  in  shire,  shore,  shorn  and  short,  in 
shirt  and  shirt,  in  sheer  and  sharp,  but  not  in  shred,  which 
exists  by  the  side  of  pot-sherd,  the  contracted  form  of 
sheared.  It  has  been  shown  already  how  thur,  the  German 
Thiir,  and  our  thorough,  is  the  same  with  door.  Thrill  is 
derived  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  thyrlian,  probably  connected 
with  thur  and  thyr,  of  which  it  looks  like  a  diminutive  form, 
and  hence  "  The  prayer  of  hym  that  loveth  hym  in  his 
prayer  thyrleth  the  clowdes,"  and  more  curiously  our  modem 
word  nostril,  as  we  learn  from  Spenser,  — 

"  Flames  of  fyre  he  threw  forth  from  his  large  nosethrilhy 

Fairy  Queen,  I.  11,  22. 

Work  has  transposed  the  r  in  wright  and  wrought,  but  re- 
tained it  in  its  place  in  irksome,  anciently  wyrhsome. 

Occasionally  this  same  letter  r  is  capriciously  inserted 
where  it  is  not  due,  or  left  out  where  it  ought  to  make  its 
appearance.  Thus  the  Anglo-Saxon  word  guma,  a  man, 
has,  for  some  now  unknown  reason,  been  endowed  with  an  r, 
and  for  the  correct  form  hride-guma,  the  man  of  the  bride, 


SHIFTING  LETTERS.  349 

we  now  say  hridegroom,  and  speak  even  of  a  groom  without 
such  support.  The  French  piquer  has  become  with  us  to 
prick;  and  the  Tatars  of  Asia,  with  a  faint  disposition  per- 
haps to  trace  them  back  to  Tartarus,  from  whence  their 
wild  hordes  invading  Europe  in  the  fourteenth  century  were 
said  to  come,  have  been  changed  into  Tartars,  so  that  Spen- 
ser already  uses  Tartary  for  hell. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  sprecan,  on  the  contrary,  has  lost  its  r, 
and  become  to  speak,  although  the  Germans  still  say  spre- 
chen  ;  preon  is  now  simply  pin,  and  spreckle,  which  is  not 
unfrequently  heard  in  Scotland,  plain  speckle.  The  Latin 
fringilla,  is  our  Jinch,  and  temper  are,  in  French  tremper,onv 


The  word  ort,  which  in  Anglo-Saxon  stood  for  the  later 
wort  (German  Wurzel),  has  lost  its  r  in  ort-yard,  our  orchard, 
and  transferred  it  to  the  beginning  of  the  word  in  its  mod- 
ern form  root.  Lychwort,  the  herb  pellitory,  as  Halliwell 
calls  it,  presents  us  the  old  form  fully,  whilst  we  see  it  most 
successfully  disguised  in  the  expression,  "  Odds  and  ends," 
which  comes  from  the  once  usual  "  ords  and  ends^ 

Other  letters  are  not  so  regularly,  but  still  occasionally 
liable  to  be  transferred  from  one  place  to  another.  Thus 
there  is  good  reason  to  believe  that^oc^  and/o^^  are  origi- 
nally one  and  the  same  word.  The  French  ingot,  with  the 
article  an  before  it,  soon  became  niggot,  as  it  is  spelt  in 
North's  "  Plutarch ; "  and  in  our  day  it  has  unexpectedly  re- 
appeared as  nugget.  S  and  k  interchange  not  unfrequently, 
and  the  much  blamed  vulgarism  of  substituting  to  axe  for 
to  ask,  finds  more  than  one  justification  in  older  authors. 
The  fact  is,  the  verb  was  originally  acsian,  and  hence  Wick- 
liffe  is  not  so  far  wrong  when  he  says,  ^^Axe  ye  and  yhe 
schulen  take ; "  nor  Chaucer  in  his  constant  use  of  "  to  axe  " 
and  "  an  axing."  Hence,  also,  the  close  connection  between 
a  tax  and  a  task,  so  that  Hotspur  can  say  "  has  tasked  the 
whole  state,"  when  he  means  taxed. 


ETYMOLOGY. 


A,  267,  285. 
A,  an,  any,  259, 266, 33 
Abandon,  288. 
Abase,  288. 
Abbotsford,  111. 
Aber,  80. 
Aberdeen,  87. 
Abergavenny,  87. 
Abernethy,  87. 
Abide,  287. 
About,  332. 
Above,  332. 
Abstract,  41. 
Accept,  41. 
Acland,  140. 
Acorn,  170. 
Acquaintance,  141. 
Action,  190. 
Acton,  106, 140, 170. 
Acute,  41. 
Adam,  115. 
Adams,  125. 
Adder,  270. 
Admiral,  207. 
Advocate,  41,  45, 164. 
Aelfric,  166. 
Aethelings,  158. 
Afeard,  287,  348. 
Again,  315. 
Agony,  337. 
Ah,  337. 
Aid,  200. 
Alaric,  156. 
Alarm,  288. 
Alas,  340. 
Albert,  346. 
Aldborough,  108. 
Alexandria,  104. 
Algebra,  268. 
Alfred,  115. 
Alligator,  268. 
Alms,  29,  30, 183. 
Alnwick,  107. 


Also,  334. 
Always,  314. 
Am,  I,  300. 
Ambassador,  75. 
Amidst,  237. 
Among,  102,  318. 
Amongst,  237. 
Ancaster,  90. 
Anchor,  31. 
And,  279. 
Anderson,  125. 
Anemone,  79. 
Anglesea,  99. 
Anguish,  337. 
Animus,  46. 
Anson,  125. 
Antic,  80,  212. 
Antioch,  104. 
Antique,  80,  212. 
Any,  223. 
Ap,  117. 
Ape,  277. 
Apennine,  85. 
Apollo,  121. 
Apollonia,  137. 
Apothecary,  270. 
Arabesque,  223. 
Archbishop,  119. 
Arden,  88. 
Ardennes,  88. 
Ardmore,  88. 
Are,  303. 
Argosy,  346. 
Aright,  315. 
Arkansas,  79. 
Arnold,  163. 
Arras,  143. 
Art,  thou,  303. 
Art,  black,  206. 
As,  334. 
Ashby,  110. 
Ashkettle,  208. 
Ask,  350. 
Assay,  80. 
Asterisk,  163. 


Ate,  75. 

Athenaeum,  202. 
Athlone,  87. 
Athwart,  245,  314. 
Atkinson,  125. 
Aught,  323. 
Augur,  271. 
August  and  augdst,  75» 
Austere,  223. 
Autun,  104. 
Avon,  84,  87. 
Away,  315. 
Aweary,  316. 
Aye,  321,  326. 
Azure,  268. 

B. 

Baby,  157. 
Bachelor,  147, 171. 
Backrag,  207. 
Badge,  61. 
Bag  of  nails,  131. 
Bairn,  346. 
Balcony,  80. 
Baldaquin,  143. 
Baldersly,  97. 
Balloon,  163. 
Balm,  36. 
Balsam,  136. 
Bangor,  88. 
Banister,  197. 
Bantling,  159. 
Barbara,  137. 
Barber,  149. 
Bardsey,  99. 
Barebones,  133. 
Barmouth,  87. 
Bamum,  104. 
Barracoon,  163. 
Barrister,  152. 
Barrow,  56. 
Base,  213. 
BasiHsk,  163. 
Bask,  284. 


352 


ETYMOLOGY. 


Bastard,  152,  164. 
Batavia,  233. 
Battle,  110,  161. 
Baxter,  152. 
Baynard  Castle,  110. 
Bayonet,  144. 
Bays  and  baize,  74. 
Bear,  346. 
Beauchamp,  123. 
Beaudesert,  110. 
Beauty,  165. 
Beaux,  185. 
Beck,  86. 

Becket,  Thomas  a,  121. 
Beckon,  281. 
Bedlam,  211. 
Beefeater,  205. 
Beer,  346. 
Beest  thou,  300. 
Beeves,  178. 
Begone,  287. 
Belcher,  129. 
Beldame,  212. 
Bell  and  Savage,  131. 
Bellini,  126. 
Bellow,  50,  59. 
Bellows,  183. 
Belly,  59. 
Belly-bound,  203. 
Belong,  287. 
Ben  Morris,  85. 
Beneath,  233. 
Benjamin,  115. 
Benoni,  115. 
Benson,  116. 
Berkley,  105. 
Bernard,  115,  163. 
Bertha,  115. 
Berwick,  87, 107. 
Beside,  315. 
Best,  233. 
Better,  145,  233. 
Between,  260. 
Betwixt,  237,  260. 
Beware,  287. 
Bic§tre,  90. 
Biddulph,  115. 
Bier,  346. 
Bigot,  127,  341. 
Billingsgate,  126. 
Billow,  99. 
Bu-tb,  346. 
Biscuit,  171. 
Bishop,  30. 

Bishop  Monckton,  111. 
Black  art,  206. 
Blame,  197. 
Bleak,  62,  221. 


Blindworm,  207,  278. 
Blunt,  133. 
Board,  347. 
Boileau,  132. 
Bonaparte,  136. 
Bones,  126. 
Boor,  215. 
Borough,  56. 
Bottle,  161. 
Boucher,  149. 
Bowcock,  158. 
Bowen,  120. 
Bowyer,  147. 
Bradford,  103. 
Braham,  116. 
Brandy,  347. 
Brat,  217,  346. 
Bravo,  55. 
Brawn,  347. 
Brazen,  222. 
Breed,  216,  346. 
Breese,  General,  151. 
Brethren,  181. 
Brewster,  152. 
Bridal,  170. 
Bride,  217,  346. 
Bridegroom,  349. 
Bridewell,  211. 
Briggs,  126. 
Broad,  347. 
Brodie,  120. 
Brothel,  346. 
Brother,  148,  217,  346. 
Brougham,  108,  346. 
Browning,  158. 
Brunehault,  135. 
Buckingham,  103. 
Budget,  59. 
Buff,  201. 
Bulge,  59. 

Bull  and  Mouth,  131. 
Bullock,  158. 
Bully,  59. 
Bumper,  150. 
Bumpkin,  156. 
Bundle,  162,  170. 
Burg,  108. 
Burgess,  80. 
Burgwin,  130. 
Burlesque,  223. 
Burly,  215. 
Burn,  346. 
Burton,  106. 
Bus,  200. 
Buster,  204. 
But,  334. 
Butcher,  149. 
BuUer,  149. 


Buttock,  158. 
Buxom,  226. 
Buzzard,  163. 
By,  97. 
By-laws,  98. 
Byron,  136. 

c. 

Cab,  200. 
Cadet,  199. 
Caitiff,  36, 220. 
Caius,  136. 
Calculate,  258. 
Calico,  143. 
Cam.  84,  87. 
Cambric,  143. 
Cambridge,  87. 
Camel,  87. 
Can,  308. 
Candle,  31. 
Cannon,  73. 
Canny,  308. 
Canon,  73. 
Canopy,  48. 
Cantire,  85. 
Canton,  263. 
Caper,  to,  277. 
Capon,  58. 
Captain,  80. 
Captive,  36, 220. 
Carlin,  155. 
Carmine,  346. 
Cart,  347. 
Cassel,  90. 
Castle,  100,  161. 
Castor,  90. 
Castrum,  28. 
Cat,  58. 

Cat,  Whittington's,  205. 
Cat-and-Wheel,  131. 
Cataract,  48. 
Cater,  58. 
Caterer,  148. 
Catkin,  156. 
Cattle,  58. 
Causeway,  203. 
Cavaignac,  117. 
Cavalry,  210. 
Chaff,  197. 
Chalmers,  129. 
Chambers,  129. 
Chanticleer,  147. 
Charles,  216. 
Charter,  149. 
Charter  House,  131. 
Chattle,  58. 
Chaucer,  129. 


ETYMOLOGY. 


363 


Cheat,  198. 
Cheddar,  87. 
Cherry,  148. 
Cherubim,  175. 
Chester,  90. 
Chicken,  182. 
Chiefest,  236. 
Children,  181. 
China,  143. 
Chine,  269. 
Chinese,  178. 
Chintz,  143. 
Chivalry,  75. 
Cholera,  48. 
Cholmondeley,  128. 
Chord,  73. 
Chxirch,  30,  62. 
Churl,  155,  216. 
Cicerone,  55. 
Cmque  Ports,  111. 
Cit,  200. 
City,  165. 
Clan, 119. 
Clayey,  223. 
Clean,  221. 
Clergy,  165. 
Clerk,  30. 
Clomb,  292. 
Close,  261. 
Clown,  213. 
Coarse,  347. 
Cock,  343. 
Cockerel,  161. 
Coffee,  178. 
Colchester,  90. 
Cold  Harbor,  91. 
Collier,  147. 
Colonia,  28. 
Color,  180. 
Colosseum,  202. 
Committee,  165. 
Companion,  214. 
Constantinople,  104. 
Copper,  143. 
Corbeil,  161. 
Cord,  73. 

Cordwainer,  143, 150. 
Corn,  170. 
Cornelian,  197. 
CornwaU,  86. 
Costume,  80. 
Could,  63,  308. 
Council,  80. 
Count,  190. 
Countrj',  165. 
Country  dance,  203. 
County,  157. 
Court,  190. 


23 


Court  cards,  209. 
Cousin,  154,  199. 
Coward,  164. 
Coxcomb,  152. 
Coy,  36. 
Cozzen,  199. 
Crab,  203. 
Crackenthorpe,  346. 
Crate,  347. 
Cravat,  143. 
Crawfish,  204. 
Crayon,  143. 
Crazy,  220. 
Cress,  347. 
Crevasse,  80. 
Crevice,  80. 
Crew,  292. 
Crimea,  346. 
Crimson,  346. 
Crow,  to,  277. 
Crown,  31. 
Cutters,  46. 
Culverkey,  209. 
Cunning,  308. 
Cunningham,  98. 
Curate,  164. 
Currants,  206. 
Curriculum,  46. 
Currier,  149. 
Curse,  347. 
Custom,  80. 
Cuts,  John,  135. 

D. 

Daffodil,  270. 
Dagger,  149. 
Daisy,  170. 
Damask,  143. 
Dandelion,  203. 
Danton,  133. 
Dapper,  221. 
Darling,  160. 
Dastard,  163. 
Daubeny,  133. 
Davis,  125. 
Dawn,  60. 
Day,  59. 
Deal,  170. 
Death,  130, 137. 
DeBrett,  130. 
DeQuincey,  128. 
Deign,  62. 
Demijohn,  208. 
Dempster,  153. 
Den,  88, 103. 
Derby,  98. 
Derwent,  84. 


Desert,  80. 
Devil,  30, 130. 
Dexter,  153. 
Diaper,  143,  270 
Dickens,  125. 
Did,  294. 
Dieu,  127. 
Digby,  98. 
Digit,  258. 
Dimity,  143. 
Dioclesian,  134. 
Disciple,  80. 
Distraught,  293. 
Dividend,  298. 
Dixon,  125. 
Do,  302. 

Dobbin,  123, 194. 
Dobree,  133. 
Dog,  to,  277. 
Dogmata,  185. 
Dole,  170. 
Dollar,  144. 
Doncaster,  90. 
Doolittle,  132. 
Doom,  166. 
Dormouse,  204. 
Downs,  106. 
Drab,  148. 
Drachm,  73. 
Draft,  73. 
Drake,  150. 
Dram,  73. 
Draper,  148. 
Draught,  73. 
Draw,  60. 
Drinkwater,  132. 
Dropsy,  199. 
Duchy,  165. 
Duck,  278. 
Dull,  164. 
Dullard,  164. 
Dumb,  221. 
Dumbarton,  107,  346. 
Dummy,  157. 
Dun,  106. 
Dunbar,  107. 
Dunce,  142. 
Dunquerque,  106. 
Durward,  164. 

E. 

Ea,  99. 
Eager,  220. 
Earl,  24. 
Early,  229. 
Earthen,  222. 
Ecod,  343. 


854 


ETYMOLOGY. 


Ecu,  159. 
Edge,  61. 
Edinboro',  108. 
Edward,  115. 
Een,  181. 
Eft,  270. 
Egad,  343. 
Egbert,  115. 
Elder,  230. 
Eleven,  262. 
Elixir,  268. 
Ellis,  116, 125. 
Else,  316. 
Ely,  99. 
Emerods,  206. 
Empty,  221. 
Enderraost,  237. 
Energy,  49. 
Engineer,  147. 
England,  108. 
Enough,  23,  286. 
Enroughty,  134. 
Ensign,  203. 
Entrail,  162. 
Epsom,  103. 
Er,  146. 
Ere,  229. 
Ermine,  143. 
Erst,  229. 
Escheat,  198. 
Essay,  80. 
Essex,  19, 108. 
Estrange,  198. 
Evening,  159. 
Ever,  314. 
Evil,  221. 
Ewhurst,  89. 
Ewridge,  89. 
Exact,  41. 
Exeter,  90. 
Extasy,  48. 
Ey,  97. 
Eyen,  180. 

F. 

Fact.  36. 
Faction,  36. 
Fag,  197. 
Fair,  146. 
Fairfax,  133,  344. 
Fairy,  142. 
Fallow,  56. 
Fan,  268. 
Fancy,  199. 
Fare,  288. 
Farthing,  156, 169. 
Farthingale,  204. 


Fashion,  36. 
Fatherland,  193. 
Faulkner,  129. 
Feat,  36. 
Feet,  176. 
Feint,  300. 
Fellow,  216. 
Ferret,  to,  277. 
Ferrule,  162. 
Ferry,  288. 
Feverfew,  31,  206. 
Feverish,  224. 
Fibber,  153. 
Fibster,  153. 
Fie,  340. 
Fiend,  296,  340. 
Fig,  31,  201. 
Filibuster,  204. 
Filly,  155. 
Finch,  349. 
Finikin,  156. 
Firkin,  156. 
Firth,  348. 
Fitz,  121. 
FlaU,  162. 
Flaxen,  222. 
Fletcher,  149. 
Flirt,  202. 
Flock,  349. 
Flower,  190. 
Floyd,  120. 
Fluellen,  120. 
Foil,  197. 
Foliage,  167. 
Folk,  349. 
Fondling,  160. 
Foolish,  224. 
Foolscap,  167. 
Foot,  180. 
Forced  meat,  204. 
Ford,  288. 
Forse,  24,  99. 
Fortnight,  100. 
Foster,  153. 
Fountain,  80, 163. 
Fowl,  162. 
Frantic,  223,  346. 
Freedom,  166. 
Freemason,  203. 
French,  224. 
Friday,  128. 
Friend,  296. 
Fright,  348. 
Frith,  348. 
Frobisher,  346. 
Frolic,  225. 
Front,  190. 
Frontispiece,  206. 


Fulsome,  226. 
Furbelow,  207. 
Furiong,  199. 
Furlough,  101. 
Furnace,  136. 
Furnish,  223. 


Gadabout,  279. 

Gadso,  343. 

Gallant,  80. 

Gdllant,  80. 

Gallows,  56. 

Gander,  150. 

Gang,  280. 

Gangrel,  162,  280. 

Gangway,  280. 

Garden,  59,  182. 

Garibaldi,  117. 

Gamer,  340. 

Garnish,  223. 

Gascoyne,  130. 

Gasp,  284. 

Gauze,  143. 

Gaveloc,  158. 

Geese,  176. 

Genii,  186. 

Gent,  200. 

Genteel,  36,  80,  220. 

Gentle,  36,  80,  220. 

George  and  Cannon,  132. 

Gerkin,  156. 

Germans,  183. 

Gertrude,  115. 

Ghostly,  225. 

Gibberish,  215. 

Gibson,  125. 

Gifford,  164. 

Gift,  300. 

Gil,  24,  99. 

Gillyflower,  205. 

Gin,  200. 

Giri,  155. 

Glad,  221. 

Gleesome,  226. 

Gloucester,  90. 

Gnome,  62. 

Go,  142,  280. 

Goat  and  Compasses,  183. 

God,  75,  221. 

Goddam,  341. 

Goddard,  127, 104. 

Godhead,  166. 

Godlike,  225. 

Godwin,  127. 

Golden,  222. 

Good,  75,  221. 


ETYMOLOGY. 


355 


Goodluck,  208. 
Gooseberry,  208. 
Gorse,  348. 
Gospel,  169. 
Gossamer,  208. 
Gossip,  217. 
Gotham,  104. 
Gotobed,  132. 
Government,  75,  80. 
Grandee,  165. 
Granny,  157. 
Grant,  199. 
Grass,  348. 
Greenwich,  107. 
Gregson,  125. 
Grimsby,  97. 
Grocer,  148. 
Grog,  200. 
Groom,  349. 
Gross,  220,  347. 
Grosvenor,  129. 
Grotesque,  223. 
Grouse,  347. 
Guard,  60. 
Guatkin,  120. 
Guelders,  59. 
Guelph,  122. 
Guess,  59. 
Guide,  59. 
Guilt,  59. 
Guise,  59,  60. 
Gumdragon,  206. 
Gyre-carline,  155. 

H. 

Hackney,  100. 
Haggard,  163. 
Hair,  184. 
Hal^vy,  116. 
Halifax,  344. 
Hamlet,  103, 162. 
Hampden,  103, 107. 
Handiwork,  286. 
Hap,  89. 
Hautboy,  203. 
Havelok,  96,  158. 
Havoc,  146,  278. 
Hawk,  146,  278. 
Hayward,  164. 
He,  245. 
Head,  301. 
Heard,  75. 
Heaven,  301. 
Heavenly,  225. 
Hector,  to,  276. 
Hedge,  61. 
Heiress,  154. 


Helena,  114. 
Helter-skelter,  197. 
Hence,  a20. 
Henpecked,  301. 
Herd,  75. 
Herford,  103. 
Heroes,  185. 
Heroine,  155. 
Herrgote,  127. 
Herring,  158. 
Heyday,  340. 
Hillock,  158. 
Him,  174. 
Himself,  254. 
Hindermost,  237. 
HireUng,  160. 
Hobnob  325. 
Hockey,  278. 
Hocus-pocus,  197. 
Hodgkin,  125. 
Hogarth,  164. 
Holborne,  131. 
Hollands,  200. 
Holy,  73,  223. 
Hooker,  207. 
Hopetoun,  106. 
Horizon,  48. 
Horse,  180, 195,  348. 
Hosen,  181. 
Hostler,  147. 
House,  283. 
Huckstep,  130. 
Huckster,  151,  278. 
Hum,  to,  279. 
Humber,  87. 
Human  and  Humane,  80. 
Humus,  46. 
Hunchbacked,  301. 
Hundred,  263. 
Hurricane,  204. 
Huss^,  55, 152,  217. 
Hustmgs,  101. 


I,  240. 

I,  for  aye,  326. 
Ice,  75. 
Ideas,  185. 
If,  335. 
Ignoble,  228. 
Ill,  221. 
Hka,  62. 
Incapable,  227. 
Incense,  80. 
Incog,  201. 
Indexes,  186. 
Indigo,  143. 


Infante,  218. 
Infantry,  210. 
Ing,  126. 
Inimical,  46. 
Innermost,  237. 
Inver,  86. 
Inverary,  87. 
Irksome,  226,  348. 
Is,  75,  304. 
Isinglass,  207. 
Isis,  84. 
Islet,  161. 
Issue,  197. 
It,  245. 
Its,  251. 


Jackson,  125. 

Janeway,  129. 

Japan,  to,  276. 

Jaunty,  220. 

Jealous,  36. 

Jeminy,  344. 

Jenner,  149. 

Jeopardy,  198. 

Jerkin,  156. 

Jersey,  99. 

Jerusalem  artichoke,  207. 

Jingo,  344. 

John  a  Nokes,  121. 

Joint,  300. 

Jole,  197. 

Jolly,  220. 

Journey,  165. 

Joysome,  226. 

Judge,  61. 

Judgment,  80. 

Juggler,  59. 

K. 

Kempis,  Thomas  d,  121. 
Ken,  308. 
Kendal,  170. 
Kenmore,  85. 
Kennard,  164. 
Kensington,  126. 
Kev,  207. 
Kickshaw,  204. 
Kin,  94,  124, 126, 156. 
Kindle,  182. 
Kine,  181. 
King,  126,  218. 
Kinrose,  85. 
Kirkby,  97. 
Kist,  62. 
Kitten,  182. 


356 


ETYMOLOGY. 


Knapsack,  216. 
Knave,  62,  216. 
Knight,  62,  210. 
Knot,  100. 
Know,  62. 
Knutsford,  100,  103. 

L. 

Lackadaisical,  340. 
Lakin,  156,  344. 
Lambkin,  156. 
Lancaster,  90. 
Landed,  301. 
Landscape,  167. 
Lantern,  206. 
Lark,  to,  277. 
Lass,  155. 
Laundress,  165. 
Law,  60. 
Lawn,  197. 
Lawson,  125. 
Lawyer,  147. 
Lazaretto,  143. 
Lazuli,  268. 
Lea,  105. 
Leamington,  136. 
Learn,  281. 
Least,  233. 
Leech,  206. 
Le  Fevre,  128. 
Legal,  36. 
Legatee,  165. 
Legend,  298. 
Legh,  105. 
Leghorn,  143,  206, 
Leicester,  90. 
Leigh,  105,  224. 
Leighton  Buzzard,  111. 
Leisure,  71. 
Lemon,  152,  234. 
Length,  231. 
Lent,  231. 
Leonard,  163. 
Less,  233. 
Lest,  334. 
Levant,  to,  276. 
Levee,  165. 
Le  Vert,  128. 
Libel,  167. 
Lice,  176. 
Lichfield,  224. 
Lichen,  48. 
Lichowl,  224. 
Licorice,  205. 
Lief,  234. 
Lifeguard,  101. 
Like,  225. 


Likewake,  225. 
Lily,  268. 
Limner,  269. 
Lincoln,  92. 
Linnet,  161. 
Lioness,  154. 
Little,  162, 170. 
Liturgy,  48. 
Livery  and  Seizen, 

199,  340. 
Loadstar,  206. 
Loadstone,  206. 
Loch,  62. 
Lonesome,  226. 
Longoyster,  203. 
Longways,  213. 
Lordling,  160. 
Lore,  281. 
Loring,  130. 
Lover,  192. 
Loyal,  36. 
Lusignan,  119. 
Lust,  310. 
Lutestring,  207. 
Lyceum,  202. 
Lynch,  to,  276. 

M. 

Mac,  117. 
Mackenzie,  61. 
McGowan,  118. 
Mclntyre,  118. 
McPherson,  118. 
Magnus,  136. 
Maiden,  155. 
Maidenhead,  167. 
Main,  146. 
Maiden,  107. 
Malkin,  156. 
Malpas,  110. 
Man,  to,  275. 
Manchester,  90. 
Mandrake,  204. 
Manhood,  166. 
Manikin,  156. 
Manner,  180. 
Manning,  158. 
Manor,  109. 
Manuel,  116. 
Marauder,  212. 
Margin.  190. 
Marjoribanks,  128. 
Mart,  180. 
Marrow,  56. 
Marry,  344. 
Marshall,  210. 
Martinet,  161. 


Martins,  194. 
Marvel,  162. 
Mary,  344. 

Mary,  St.,  Overy,  200. 
Marygold,  208. 
Marylebone,  131. 
Mass,  31. 
Massdna,  116. 
to,  Massinger,  132. 
Mattox,  127, 158. 
Maud,  200. 
Maudlin,  200. 
Maw,  60. 
Maximum,  46. 
May,  305. 
Mean,  180. 
Medici,  126. 
Megrim,  206. 
Melancthon,  135. 
Men,  176. 
Menav  Bridge,  99. 
Merode,  212. 
Mersey,  99. 
Methinks,  309. 
Mice,  176. 
Mid,  332. 
Middle,  170. 
Middlesex,  108. 
Midge,  67. 
Might,  74. 
Mildew,  17L 
Million,  258. 
Milner,  149. 
Milton,  106. 
Mincing  Lane,  132. 
Mine,  249. 
Minimum,  46. 
Minion,  156. 
Mint,  31,  36. 
Minute,  180,  258. 
Minx,  156. 
Mir^s,  116. 
Miscreant,  213. 
Mitchell,  124,  232. 
Mite,  74, 180. 
Mixon,  125. 
Moat,  74. 
Mob,  200. 
Moe,  more,  231. 
Mold,  111. 
Molyneux,  129. 
Monev,  36. 
Moneved,  301. 
Mongibello,  86. 
Mongrel,  162. 
Monikin,  156. 
Monk,  30. 
Montague,  109. 


ETYMOLOGY. 


357 


Moon,  188. 
Moonling,  160. 
Morning,  159. 
Morocco,  150. 
Mortimer,  123. 
Morton,  106. 
Moseley,  116. 
Moses,  115. 
Moss,  116. 
Most,  231. 
Mote,  74,  306. 
Mought,  292,  305. 
Mount  Vidgeon  pea,  208 
Mountain,  62,  80, 163. 
Mow,  231. 
Much,  62. 

Muck,  to  run  a,  267. 
Muckle,  232. 
Mummery,  215. 
Muslin,  143. 
Must,  308. 
Muzzle,  162. 
My,  250. 

N. 

Nag,  270. 
Nail,  162. 
Nanny,  270. 
Nantwich,  107. 
Napier,  129. 
Napkin,  157. 
Naught,  322. 
Navvy,  201. 
Nay,  321. 
Neander,  135. 
Near,  234. 
Necessary,  75. 
Necromancy,  206. 
Needle,  162. 
Needs,  313. 
Negroponte,  207. 
Neighbor,  234. 
Neither,  325. 
Ned,  270. 
Neddy,  194. 
Nell,  125,  270. 
Nelson,  125. 
Netherlands,  233. 
Netley,  105. 
Never,  314. 
Newcastle,  93. 
News,  184. 
Newt,  270. 
Newton,  106. 
Nick,  Old,  100. 
Niggard,  164. 
Nightmare,  208. 


Ninny,  157. 
No,  321. 
Noddy,  157. 
Nonce,  271,  319. 
None,  325. 
Norfolk,  19, 108. 
Normans,  183. 
Norton,  106. 
Nostril,  348. 
Not,  322. 
Nowadays,  314. 
Noways,  314. 
.Nugget,  270,  349. 
Nuncle,  270. 
Nurse,  154. 

0. 

0',  117. 
Oak,  75. 
Oaken,  222. 
Obstacle,  162. 
O'Brien,  136. 
Och,  127. 
O'clock,  315. 
Odds  and  ends,  209. 
Odilon  Barrot,  118. 
Offley,  105. 
Oldmixon,  125. 
Olivier  le  Daim,  135- 
Omelet,  198. 
Once,  319. 
One,  259. 
Onus,  46. 
Or,  333. 
Orange,  268, 
Orchard,  59,  349. 
Orizon,  80. 
Orrery,  142. 
Osborne,  100. 
Osiander,  136. 
Other,  258. 
Ought,  316. 
Our,  249. 
Ours,  251. 
Ouse,  84. 
Owe,  280. 
Owlet,  161. 
Own,  280,  296. 
Oxen,  181. 
Oxford,  103. 
Oyez,  205. 

P. 

Paddock,  158. 
Pagan,  213. 
PaU,  31. 


Palestine  soup,  207. 
Pail-Mall,  197. 
Palsy,  199. 
Pander,  276. 
Pansy,  198. 
Pantheon,  202. 
Paradox,  48, 199. 
Paralysis,  48. 
Paramour  152, 192. 
Parchment,  143. 
Pardoe,  342. 
Parsall,  342. 
Parsley,  31. 
Parson,  36. 
Part,  180. 
Party,  75. 
Patterson,  125. 
Payne,  129. 
Peach,  143. 
Peas,  177. 
Peeress,  154. 
Pelissier,  117. 
Pen,  85. 
Pence,  178. 
Pendennis,  85. 
Penmon,  85,  99. 
Pennies,  178. 
Pennine,  Alps,  85. 
Penning  and  penny,  159. 
Penrose,  85. 
Penzance,  85. 
Pepper,  31. 
Perchance,  315. 
Perhaps,  314. 
Perkin,  127. 
Person,  36,  322. 
Petrels,  207. 
Petty,  220. 
Pheasant,  143. 
Philippi,  104. 
Philippics,  142. 
Philpotts,  125. 
Phipps,  125. 
Phiz,  201. 
Phlegm,  62. 
Pickett,  120. 
Piccoluomini,  156. 
Pickerel,  161. 
Picturesque,  223. 
Piecemeal,  314. 
Pier,  197. 
Pin,  198,  349. 
Pindus,  85. 
Pioneer,  147. 
Pipkin,  156. 
Pistol,  144. 
Pleasure,  71. 
Plot,  200. 


358 


ETYMOLOGY. 


Plum  and  Feathers,  132. 
Plunder.  101. 
Plilsh,  197. 
Pocket,  161. 
Polk,  158. 
Pollard,  163. 
Pollock,  127, 158. 
Pontefract,  93. 
Popkiss,  132. 
Porpoise,  203. 
Portwav,  91. 
Posgaru,  133. 
Posthumous,  197. 
Potsherd,  167. 
Pottinger,  270. 
Poulterer,  148. 
Pound,  31. 
Practice,  180. 
preach,  31. 
Presbyter,  30. 
pretty,  221. 
Prichard,.120. 
Prick,  349. 
Prim,  201. 
Prime,  31. 
princess,  154. 
Progress,  45. 
Proof,  198. 
Property,  80. 
Propriety,  80. 
Provost,  31. 
Proxy,  199. 
Prude,  212. 
Psalms,  30. 
Pshaw,  204. 
Pumice,  31. 
Punch  and  Judy,  132. 
Punster,  153. 
Puny,  220. 
Purlieu,  215. 
Purpose,  346. 
Pye,  343. 

Q. 

Quail,  278. 
Quandary,  204. 
Quarantine,  263. 
Quarter  Sessions,  rose 

of,  203. 
Queen,  155,  218. 
Quiet,  36. 
Quinsy,  199. 

R. 

Randolph,  163. 
Rape,  98. 


Rash,  221. 
Rat,  to,  277. 
Rather,  233. 
Ravenhill,  100. 
Ravenous,  277. 
Reckless,  227. 
Reckon,  281. 
Reeve,  168. 
Reign,  62. 
Respectable,  212. 
Reverend,  298. 
Reynard,  163. 
Reynold,  163. 
Rhodomontade,  142. 
Richards,  125. 
Riches,  183. 
Rickets,  206. 
Ridge,  61. 
Riding,  101,  261. 
Riding-coat,  204. 
Roadster,  153. 
Roamer,  150,  215. 
Rochester,  90. 
Roodey,  99. 
Root,  349. 
Rosemary,  206. 
Rossini,  126. 
Rugby,  98, 148. 
Rule,  31. 
Runagate,  207. 
Russet,  161. 


Saddleback,  84. 
Saffron,  268. 
Salisbury,  108. 
Salmon,  116. 
Saltcellar,  206. 
Sampler,  269. 
Samson,  125. 
Sandwich,  107. 
Sandy  Acre,  131. 
Sans,  332. 
Sapling,  160. 
Saragossa,  104. 
Sash,  197. 
Satellites,  185. 
Satin,  144. 
Satterthwaite,  128. 
Saturday,  128. 
Saunterer,  148,  215. 
Savior,  147. 
Saw,  60. 
Sawyer,  147. 
Scandal,  296. 
Scar.  107. 
Scarborough,  108. 


Scaredevil,  180. 
Scent,  74. 
Scipio,  115. 
Scorch,  284. 
Score,  263. 
Scotch,  224. 
Scratt,  100. 
Scratch,  Old,  100. 
Scrimmage,  269. 
Scruple,  258. 
Scudo,  159. 
Scum,  198. 
Seamstress,  154. 
Second,  258. 
Secure,  36. 
Sedge,  61. 
Sedgwick,  107. 
Segar,  197. 

Seldom,  174,  225,  314. 
Self,  254. 
Sennight,  100. 
Sent,  74. 
Seraphim,  175. 
Sere,  48. 
Serf,  216. 
Sergeant,  60. 
Sewer,  197. 
Shabby,  220. 
Shakelady,  132. 
Shakespeare,  133. 
Shall,  307. 
Shalot,  269. 
Sham,  200. 

Shamefaced,  209,  227. 
Shands,  129. 
Shanks,  126. 
She,  245. 
Shear,  167. 
Shepody,  Mt.,  130. 
Sheppy,  99. 
Sheriff,  168. 
Shilling,  159. 
Shire,  168. 
Shoon,  181. 
Shore,  167. 
Should,  63. 
Shovel,  162. 
Shred,  168,  348. 
Shrew,  192. 
Shrub,  199. 
Shuttlecock,  209. 
Silly,  225. 
Simonides,  134. 
Simony,  142. 
Since,  332. 
Singer,  153. 
Sinclair,  123. 
Sister,  152. 


ETYMOLOGY. 


859 


Skinker,  131. 
Skirt,  168. 
Skirmish,  269. 
Slander,  269. 
Sleddel,  170. 
Sloraan,  116. 
Smallpox,  153. 
Smith,  136. 
Sneak,  278. 
Snowden,  84. 
Snows,  The,  130. 
Sodor,  97. 
Soldier,  147, 160. 
Some,  225. 
Son,  125. 

Songstress,  151, 154. 
Sorcerer,  148. 
Sorrel,  161. 
Sorrow,  56. 
Sorry,  223. 
Southernwood,  209. 
Sovereign,  62. 
Spain,  62,  268. 
Sparrow,  56. 
Sparrowgrass,  206. 
Speak,  349. 
Speckle,  349. 
Spenser,  128. 
Spinster,  152. 
Spitalfields,  201. 
Sprite,  269. 
Stabback,  132. 
Staggard,  103. 
Stain,  284. 
Staines.  93. 
Stake,  73. 
Stanton,  106. 
Stationer,  149. 
Statuesque,  223. 
Status,  46. 
Staves,  177. 
Stavesacre,  205. 
Steadfast,  209,  227. 
Steak,  73. 
Sterling,  130, 160. 
Stern.  223. 
Stewart,  164. 
Stirrup,  209. 
Stocking,  182. 
Stoddard,  164. 
Storthing,  101. 
Strange,  198. 
Strath,  87. 
Stratum,  28,  91. 
Stratford,  91. 
St.  John,  123. 
St.  Leger,  123. 
St.  Mary  Overy,  200. 


Suflfolk,  19, 108. 
Sum,  226,  266. 
Summerset,  204. 
Summons,  184. 
Sumner,  129, 150. 
Sun,  188. 
Sure,  36,  71. 
Surgeon,  201. 
Surgery,  78. 
Surry,  166. 
Sussex,  19, 108. 
Sutherland,  97. 
Sutton,  106. 
Sweetheart,  164. 
Swine,  180. 
Syrup,  199. 


Tadcaster,  90. 
Tadpole,  201. 
Tatton,  56. 
Tallyho,  198. 
Tan,  350. 
Tansy,  198. 
Tantalize,  276. 
Tapster,  152. 
Tartars,  349. 
Task,  350. 
Taylor,  136. 
Tea,  78. 
Teamster,  151. 
Tebbs,  123. 
Telfair,  129. 
Temper,  349. 
Temple,  111. 
Ten,  105,  261. 
Tennis,  198. 
Terminus,  186. 
That,  335. 
Thaxter,  153. 
The,  266. 
Them,  174. 
Themselves,  254. 
Thence,  320. 
rhev,  249. 
Thine,  249. 
Thing,  101. 
Third,  260. 
Thirlwall,  92. 
Thoresby,  97, 128. 
Thorough,  331. 
Thoroughgood,  208. 
Thorpe,  97. 
Thou,  241. 
Three,  260. 
Threshold,  163. 
Thrice,  319. 


Thrill,  348. 
Through,  331. 
Thugut,  135. 
Thurlow,  128. 
Thursday,  128. 
Thwaite,  97. 
Thy,  250. 
Tick,  202. 
Ticket,  198,  269. 
Tidings,  184. 
Tile,  197. 
Till,  333. 
Tin, 198. 
Tinsel,  269. 
Tipple,  129. 
To,  282. 

ToUemache,  199. 
Tom  a  Styles,  121. 
Tomkin,  127. 
Toothsome,  226. 
Top,  sleep  like  a,  205. 
Topsy-turvy,  209. 
Tough,  23. 
Town,  106,  260. 
Tract,  36. 
Tramroads,  200. 
Transact,  41. 
Treacle,  206. 
Treasure,  345. 
Treat,  36. 
Treen,  222. 
TroUope,  152. 
Trouble,  345. 
Trump,  197. 
Trumpet,  161. 
Tuberose,  203. 
Tucker,  149. 
Tun,  105. 
Tunnel,  106,  260. 
Turnkey,  197. 
Twain,  620. 
Twelve,  262. 
Twelfth  Night,  100. 
Twenty,  262. 
Twice,  319. 
Twin,  182,  260. 
Two,  260. 
Tynewald,  101. 
Tyranny,  105,  261. 

u. 

Ufford,  103. 
Ultimatum,  46. 
Unawares,  319. 
Unbeknown,  287. 
Unpossible,  227. 
Until,  334. 


360 


ETYMOLOGY. 


Upholsterer,  154. 
Uppermost,  237. 
Upwards,  319. 
Uracca,  137. 
Urchin,  201. 
Ursula,  137. 
Usher,  189. 
Uttermost,  237. 

V. 

Vail,  74. 
Vale,  74. 
Valet,  161. 
Van,  200,  269. 
Varlet,  161. 
Varnish,  143. 
Vehicle,  162. 
Velvet,  144. 
Verdict,  171. 
Verdigris,  206. 
Verjuice,  206. 
Verse,  31. 
Vertu,  5. 
Vestry,  197. 
Victoria,  104. 
Viking,  94. 
Villain,  213,  214. 
Vinegar,  171,  220. 
Virtuoso,  55. 
Vixen,  155. 
Voice,  190. 
Volley,  197. 

w. 

Wages,  60. 
Wagon,  59. 
Wales,  86. 
Wallsend,  92. 
Walrus,  348. 
Walton,  106. 
Wansbeck,  86. 
War,  60. 
Warburton,  106. 
Warrant,  199. 
Warren,  60. 
Warwick,  107. 
Was,  304. 
Wasp,  60. 
Washington,  104. 
Waste,  60. 
Wastrel,  160. 


Watkin,  125. 
Wattling  Street,  92. 
Watts,  125. 
Way,  59. 
We,  241. 
Wearisome,  226. 
Webster,  152. 
Wedge,  61. 
Wednesday,  128. 
Weird,  308. 
Welsh,  224. 
Welfare,  288. 
Welkin,  182. 
Welladay,  340. 
Wellnigh,  234. 
Welsh  rabbit,  208. 
Wend,  295. 
Were,  304. 
Wert,  303. 
Wessex,  19, 108. 
Whelp,  60. 
Whence,  320. 
Which,  256. 
Whiles,  314. 
Whilk,  62. 
Whilom,  174,  314. 
Whilst,  237,  314. 
Whit,  322. 
Whitby,  98. 
Whittington's  cat,  205 
Wholly,  73. 
Whom,  17^. 
Why,  314. 
Wicket,  60. 
Widower,  150. 
Wife,  152. 
Wifukie,  157. 
Wig,  201. 
Wight,  322. 
Wilberforce,  100,  208. 
Wilcox,  127. 
Wilkin,  125, 127. 
William,  60. 
Wills,  125. 
Willy-nilly,  325. 
Winchester,  90. 
Window,  170. 
Winthrop,  346. 
Wise,  60. 
Wiseacre,  207. 
Wiss,  I,  286. 
With,  331. 


Witness,  141, 168. 
Wizard,  163. 
Woe,  worse,  worst,  233. 
Womeh,  176,  183. 
Wood,  Anthony  a,  121. 
Wooden,  222. 
Woof,  152. 
Woolen,  222. 
Wooster,  153. 
Worship,  167. 
Worm,  278. 
Wormwood,  138,  207. 
Worse,  232. 
Worship,  167. 
Worst,  232. 
Worsted,  143. 
Worth,  308. 
Wotton,  106. 
Would,  63,  307. 
Wright,  348. 
Wye,  84. 
Wyches,  107. 


Yampert,  123. 
Yard,  59. 
Yclept,  286. 
Ye,  246. 
Year,  59. 
Yearling,  280. 
Yellow,  56,  59. 
Yes,  326. 
Yesterday,  59. 
Yet,  59. 
Yew,  89. 
Yoke,  59. 
Yore,  59. 
York,  87. 
You,  246. 
Young,  59. 
Youngster,  153. 
Younker,  153. 
Your,  249. 
Yours,  251. 
Youth,  141. 


z. 


Zealous,  36. 
Zounds,  342. 


INDEX. 


A,  for  he,  245. 

before  verbs,  288. 
before  adverbs,  313. 
Ablatives,  314. 
Abuse  of  nouns,  196,  202. 
of  foreign  nouns,  202, 

207. 
of  adjectives,  220. 
Accent,  74. 

sensual  and  logical, 

74. 
sign  of  age  of  words, 

78. 
changes  the  spelling, 

80. 
in  compound  nouns, 

171. 
Address,  mode  of,  248. 
Adjectives,  219. 

from  other  parts  of 

speech,  221. 
as  nouns,  144. 
with  possessive  pro- 
nouns, 145. 
not    original  words, 

219. 
negative,  227. 
inflections  of,  228. 
as  verbs,  279. 
as  adverbs,  317. 
as  participles,  299. 
change  meaning,  220. 
Adverbs,  313. 
>     as  verbs,  279. 

are       abbreviations, 

313. 
from  nouns,  313. 
from  adjectives,  316. 
from  numerals,  319. 
from  pronouns,  320. 
from  verbs,  320. 
Affirmative  adverbs,  321. 


Algonquin  languages,  27, 

172. 
Alias,  in  names,  134. 
Alphabet,  English,  73. 
American  Orthography  in 

Latin  words,  45. 

local  names,  112. 
Angles,  108. 
Anglo-Saxons,  14, 18. 
Anglo-Saxon  priests,  31. 

and  Swedish,  14. 

dual,  182. 

declension,  172. 

inflections,  174,  266, 
291. 

gender  lost,  190. 

and    the   Reformers, 
.32. 
Apostrophe,  175. 
Aram,  Eugene,  82. 
Arabic  in  English,  207. 

numerals,  264. 
Article  in  English,  265. 
-ard,  115, 163. 
Armorican,  11. 
Article,  265. 

indefinite,  266. 

definite,  266. 

use  of,  266. 

disguised,  267. 

misunderstood,  267. 

spurious,  198. 
Arvan,  9. 
-ate,  164. 
Augmentatives,  163. 

in  -ing,  160. 

Saxon,  163. 

French,  164. 
Auxiliary  verbs,  302. 


B. 

Bacon,  Lord,  38. 


Bayeux,  tapestry  of,  72. 
Be,  before  verbs,  287. 

before  adverbs,  314. 
Be,  to,  303. 
Bible,  translated,  32. 
Bohemian,  15. 
Botanical  names,  206. 
Britons,  20. 
By.  97. 


c. 

C,  before  verbs,  283. 
C,  changed  into  k,  182. 
Caesar,  in  England,  27. 
Can,  I,  308. 
Canute,  song  of,  30,  100. 

king  of  England,  95. 
Cases,  172. 
Celtic,  11. 

proper  names,  120. 

in  English,  23. 

local  names,  83. 

not  written,  89. 

numerals,  262. 
Change  of  vowels,  292. 

of  consonants,  293. 
Cheshire,  105. 
Chinese  verbs,  271. 
Church  of  Rome,  28. 

service,  44. 
Classic,  Learning,  37. 
Claudius,  27,  64. 
Commons,  house  of,  44. 
Comparative  degrees, 
228. 

double,  236. 
Compound  nouns,  168. 

of  foreign  origin,  171. 
Compound  verbs,  288. 
Conjugation,  291. 
Conjunctions,  333. 

obsolete,  335. 


362 


INDEX. 


Consonants,  268. 

change  in  verbs,  283. 
Contraction    of    words, 
141. 

of  names,  131. 

of  nouns,  146, 197. 

of  Latin  words,  198. 
Cornish,  11. 

names,  85,  88. 
Counting,  mode  of,  257. 
Cumberland,  86. 
Cymric,  11. 

and  Gaelic,  12. 


D. 

D,  changed  into  th,  284. 

added  to  verbs,  284. 
Danelag,  95. 
Danes  in  England,  23. 
Danish,  14. 

in  English,  14. 

influence  on  orthog- 
raphy, 70. 

local  names,  97. 

mode  of  address,  248. 
Dative,  for  adverbs,  314. 
Declension,   in  Anglo- 
Saxon,  172. 

lost,  173. 
Definite  tense,  291. 
Dentals,  in  German,  49. 
Degrees,    comparative, 

228. 
Derivative  nouns,  146. 
Devonshire,  dialect  of,  51. 
Diminutives,  156. 

of  nouns,  156. 

of  verbs,  284. 

in  -ing,  159. 

in  -ling,  160. 

in  -et,  162. 

of     classic      origin, 
162. 

Scotch,  157. 
Disguised  names,  116. 
Do,  to,  302. 
-dom,  165. 

Doomsday-book,  20, 166. 
Dooms,  166. 

Double  forms  for  com- 
parative and  su- 
perlative, 236. 

of  negatives  and  af- 
firmatives, 324. 
Dual,    in    English,    182, 
269. 


Dualism   of  words,  139, 

229. 
Duodecimal       measures, 

262. 
Dutch  names,  115. 

words  illtreated,  207. 
mode     of     address, 
248. 


E. 

E,  initial,  148. 

final,  55. 

suppressed,  294,  318. 
-ee,  164. 
Egbert,  20. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  24,  37, 

47. 
-el,  161. 
-en,  for  plural,  180. 

for  adjectives,  222. 

for  verbs,  280. 

for  plural  in  verbs, 
290. 

for  participle  present, 
295. 

for  past,  301. 
English, 

modem  formed,  44. 

beauty  of,  53,  266. 

sibilants,  50. 

vowels,  71. 

monosyllabic,  54. 

mechanical      perfec- 
tion, 53, 174. 

prosody,  75. 

local  names,  128. 

enclosures,  105. 

surnames,  116, 133. 

names  changed,  208. 

despised  in  England, 
177. 

power  of  absorption, 
185. 

mature  character  of, 
53, 184. 

rejects  gender,  187. 

words  in  French,  202. 

nouns  changed,  196, 
208,  215. 

numerals  how  form- 
ed, 259. 

article,  use  of,  267. 

-er,  146, 192,  284. 
Erse,  12. 
Essayists,  45. 
-esse,  154, 192. 


-est,  in  superlatives,  2 

in  verbs,  290. 
-et,  160. 
-eth,  290. 
-ette.  160. 
Ethelred,  king,  94. 
Euphony,  laws  of,  53. 
Expletives,  248,  310. 


F,  changed  into  v,  178. 
Fallen  words,  211,  216. 
For,  in  verbs,  288. 
Foreign    nouns   in   Eng- 
lish, 190,  203. 
words  misunderstood, 
202. 
Frederick  the  Great,  3. 
French,  13. 

nasal  sounds,  49. 
accent,  77. 
diminutives,  160. 
augmentatives,  164. 
prevailing    in    Eng- 
land, 25. 
ill-treated,  198,  203, 

269. 
adjectives,  220. 
numerals,  258. 
mode    of    counting, 

262. 
disguised  article  in, 

269. 
gender,  186. 
nouns       contracted, 

197. 
de,  added   in    Eng- 
lish, 269. 
Frisians,  93. 

in  England,  94. 
Frisic,  94. 
Future  of  verbs,  305. 


G. 

Gadhelic,  12. 

Ge,  before  verbs,  285. 

changed  into  be  and 
a,  286. 
Gender,  186, 190. 

lost,  187. 

ditferent     of     same 
words,  151, 153.     . 

artificial,  188. 

neuter,  in  nouns,  190. 


INDEX. 


363 


Gender,  in  pronouns,  246. 
changed    from   fem- 
inine to  masculine, 
151. 
Genitive  in  s  for  adverbs, 

314. 
German,  high,  14. 
low,  14. 
dentals,  49. 
gender,  186. 
mfluence,    in    Eng- 
lish, 25. 
■words  ill-treated,  207. 
mode  of  address,  248. 
article,  267. 
God,  name  of,  157. 
Gothic,  14,  43. 
Grammatical  forms,  174. 
Greek,  in  English,  16,  46, 
205. 
grammar,  68. 
mode  of  address,  249, 
article,  265. 
verbs,  272. 
words   of    counting, 

259. 
contracted,  205. 
Gypsies,  10. 

H. 

Hadrian,  27. 

Hastings,  20. 

Have,  to,  304. 

He,  245. 

-head,  166. 

Hebrew  grammar,  68. 

Hellenic,  12. 

Henry  I.,  96. 

Henry  HI.,  proclamation 

of,  61. 
His,  251. 
Holstem,  94. 
Hornbook,  264. 
-hood,  166. 
Hybrid  words,  166, 228. 

I. 

I,  239. 

I,  for  aye,  326. 
-ie,  157, 180,  223. 
Iguvium,  tables  of,  13. 
Impersonal  verbs,  309. 
-in,  155. 

Indefinite  article,  259. 
tense,  291. 


Indie,  10. 

Indian  gender,  189. 
Indo-European,  9. 
Inflections,  173,  265. 

lost  in  English,  174, 
265,  289. 

of  verbs,  282. 
Infinitive,  281. 
-in^^  158.  296. 
Inkhom  terms,  38. 
Interjections,  336. 

origin  of  all  words,  7, 
337. 

use  of,  338. 

disguised,  341. 
Iranic,  10. 
Irish  culture,  28. 
Irregular  verbs,  295. 
-ish,  223. 
-it,  245,  311. 
Italic,  12. 
Italian, 

in  English,  24. 

mode  of  address,  249. 

articles,  268. 

its,  251. 


James  I.,  38. 
Jutes,  18. 

local  names  of,  108. 


-kin,  156. 

Knights  Templar,  111. 

L. 

Lancashire,  dialect  of,  23, 

51. 
Language, 

a    living    organism, 

305. 
mirror  of  soul,  239. 
adventurers  of,  278. 
inner  life  of,  196. 
Latin,  12,  13,  16,  26,  29, 
43. 
use  in  English,  35. 
grammar,  68, 
prosody,  74. 
nouns    in     English, 

190. 
ill  treated,  198,  206. 


Latin,  article,  265. 

accent,  74. 
-less,  227. 
-let,  162. 
Lincolnshire,  97. 
-ling,  159. 
Lisping,  50. 
-ly,  224,  225,  317. 
Local    names    and   his- 
tory, 82. 


M. 

Man,  Isle  of,  12,  88,  99. 

Mann,  12,  88. 

Marriage  service,  32, 167. 

Meaning  changed,  209. 

Mohegans,  language  of, 
219. 

Monks,  local  names  from, 
4. 

Monosyllables  in  Eng- 
lish, 54. 


N. 

Names, 

their  meaning,  114. 
from  trades,  124. 
the     mother's    con- 
duct, 152. 
Saints,  123. 
Saxons,  123. 
Danes,  1. 
proper,  114,  194. 
from  plurals,  126. 
from  the  Creator,  127. 
from  the  names   of 

gods,  128. 
from  misconduct  of 

parents,  152. 
from  offices  at  court, 

128. 
double,  132. 
too  short,  134. 
change  of,  130,  137. 
influence  of,  114, 137. 
of  animals  given  to 

tools,  195. 
added,     to     express 

gender,  194. 
shortened,  199. 
of  animals,  194. 
Dutch,    in    English, 

115. 
of  rivers,  84. 


364 


INDEX. 


Napoleon,  name  of,  74. 
Nasal  sounds,  in  French, 
-     49. 

in  Latin,  281. 
Naturalization  of  foreign 

nouns,  190. 
Nationality,    expressions 

of,  240. 
Nations,  the  Six,  52. 
-ness,  168. 
Negative  adverbs,  321. 

double,  324. 
Neuter,  in  nouns,  189. 

unpopular,  190,  253. 
New  England  drawl,  51. 
Norfolk,  dialect  of,  51. 
Normans,  20,  33. 

local  names,  109. 

proper  names,  128. 

inflections,  36,  173. 
Norse,  surnames,  95. 
Norseman,  94. 
Northumberland,  94. 

dialect  of,  51. 
Norwegian,  14. 
Nouns,  139. 

and  verbs,  139,  142, 
273. 

abstract,  141. 

oldest  parts  of  speech, 
139. 

from  proper  names, 
142,  275. 

derivative,  146. 

compound,  168. 

abused,  196. 

strong  and  weak,  176. 

of  one  number  only, 
179. 

used   as    adjectives, 
144,  221. 

used  as  verbs,  142, 
274. 

contracted,  197. 

curtailed,  200,  208. 
Number  of  nouns,  179. 
Numerals,  223,  257. 

how  written,  264. 

useful  for  etvmology, 
258,262.' 

comparative  table  of, 


0, 117. 
Oaths,  243. 
Oblique  cases,  243. 


-ock,  158. 

On,  314. 

One,  added  to  adjectives. 

144. 
Origin  of  language,  8. 
Orkneys,  97. 
Oscan,  12. 
Ought,  306. 
Our,  249. 
Ours,  250. 
Oxford,  37. 


Panslavism,  15. 
Participles,  295. 

present,  295. 

past,  298. 

from  nouns,  300. 
Particles,  329. 
Particles  as  verbs,  279. 
Past  tenses,  291. 
Patronymics,  124. 

in  -ing,  158. 

in  -ling,  159. 

in  -ster,  152. 
Periodic  style,  42. 
Persian,  249. 
Phonography,  66. 
Pliancy  of  English,  40. 
Plural,  175. 

vulgar  fondness  for, 
126. 

in  Hebrew,  175. 

in  Persian,  176. 

in  Anglo  Saxon,  176. 

double  forms  of,  177, 
181. 

in  -en,  180,  290. 

apparent,  183. 

of  nouns,  177. 

with  singular  mean- 
ing, 182. 

foreign  forms  of,  185. 

majestic,  246. 

in  verbs,  290. 
Polish,  15,  249. 
Popes,  names  of,  130. 
Possessive  pronouns,  249. 

with  adjectives,  145. 
Prefixes  to  verbs,  285. 
Prepositions,    173,    266, 
330. 

compound,  332. 
Present,  continued,  305. 
Printers  in  England,  72. 
Pronouns,  173, 238. 


Pronoims,  luxury  of  lan- 
guage, 239. 

to    express    gender. 
193. 

reflexive,  253. 

lawless,  242. 

used   for    inflection, 
266. 

used  for  verbs,  275. 

as  expletives,  310. 

oldest  part  of  speech, 
238. 

none  Norman,  240. 

relative,  255. 

possessive,  249. 
Prosody,  75. 
Puritans,  Latin  of,  38. 


Quakers'  Thee,  242. 


R. 

R,  liquid,  transftrred,  345. 
Radical  letters  changed, 

292. 
Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  38. 
Reaping     machines     of 

Celts,  118. 
Reduplication,  294. 
Reflexive  pronouns,  253. 
Relative  pronoun,  255. 
Restoration,  the,  42. 
-ric,  166. 

Risen  words,  210. 
Romance  languages,  265. 
Romans,  43. 

camps  of,  28. 

roads  of,  91. 

wall  of,  92. 

names  of,  114. 

numbers  of,  258,  264. 
Runes,  71. 

Russian  mode  of  address, 
249. 

s. 

-8,  for  genitive,  175. 
-s,  or  es,  for  plural,  176. 
S,  prefixed  to  verbs,  284. 
inserted    in     verbs, 

284. 
sign  of  adverbs,  313, 
316. 


INDEX. 


365 


Sanscrit,  10. 
Saxons,  18, 102. 
Saxon,  14. 

names,  age  of,  123. 

in  England,  102. 

nouns  ill  treated  in 
English,  209. 
Scandinavian  languages, 
14. 

influence,  304. 
Sclavonic,  15,  49. 
Scotch,  11. 

fondof-ster,  153. 

diminutives,  157. 

retains  old  forms,  62, 
314. 
Self,  254. 

Semi-Saxon  article,  265. 
Shakespeare,  qu.  45. 

his  English,  41. 

how  spelt,  48,  72. 
Shall,  I,  307. 
She,  245. 
-ship,  167. 
-shire,  167. 
Sibilants  in  English,  50, 

290. 
Shortening  of  words,  55. 
Singular,  175. 

of  nouns  only,  180. 
Slesvic,  94. 
-some,  225. 
South,  speech  of,  52. 
Spanish, 

in  English,  25. 

mode  of  address,  249. 

article,  268. 
Spelling,  67. 

Spiritual  power  of  Eng- 
lish, 57,  299. 
-ster,  151. 
Strong  nouns,  176. 

verbs,  291. 
Suflblk,  dialect  of,  51. 
Superlative  degrees,  228. 

double  forms  of,  229, 
236. 

in  -est,  236. 


Surnames,  115. 

how  derived,  116. 

compound,  132. 

Puritan,  133. 
Swedish,  14. 
Sylvester  II.,  264. 
Synonyms,  41. 


T. 

Tacitus,  27. 

Tavistock,    nunnery    of, 

22. 
Tenses,  of  verbs,  291. 
Teutonic  languages,  13. 
Th,  63. 
Thee,  242. 
Thou,  241,  247. 
To,  before  verbs,  282. 
Ton,    large    and    small, 

262. 
Transferred  gender, 
beauty  of,  188. 
Turanic,  9. 
-ty,  223. 
Tynewald,  88. 


u. 


Ulfilas,  14. 
Umbrian,  13. 
Un,  227. 


V.  . 

Vaugelas,  69. 
Verbs,  272. 

used  as  nouns,  273. 
are     living     words, 

272. 
from  proper  names. 

276. 
from  adjectives,  279. 
by    change  of  final 

letter,  280. 


Verbs  from  other  verbs, 

283. 
diminutive,  284. 
compound,  288. 
weak     and     strong, 

291. 
irregular,  295. 
auxiliary,  302. 
impersonal,  309. 
Vowels, 

dimmed,  269. 
changed    in    plural, 

176. 
changed     in    verbs, 

283. 
changed      in      past 

tense,  291. 


w. 

War,  terms  of,  210. 
We,  with  singular  mean- 

ing,  245. 
Weak  nouns,  176. 

verbs,  291. 
Wedge  writing,  10. 
Welsh,  11. 
Wight,  Isle  of,  18. 
Wil  frith.  Bishop,  93. 
Will,  I,  306. 
-wold.  163. 


Y,  157, 165, 180. 

for  th,  64. 

for  adjectives,  223. 

before  verbs,  286. 
Ye,  247. 

for  thou,  246. 
Your,  249. 
Yours,  250. 


z. 


Zend,  10. 


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